


An Honest Man: A SHIELD Codex

by KhamanV



Series: SHIELD Codex [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Courtroom Drama, Crime Drama, Crossover, Gen, General, Morality, Science Fiction, Series, shield codex, space fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 42,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KhamanV/pseuds/KhamanV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since his struggle with not only the Darkhold but his own nature, Loki has found a strange new path in life, and grudging allies of a sort he'd never expected - but it's not an easily kept path. Now, accused of the greatest monstrosity of his life and awaiting the most final of consequences, Loki needs at his side the one thing he himself has never been - an honest man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Book Thief

**Author's Note:**

> _In the beginning were the words, and Loki’s words led to a world between worlds in search of a chance to free himself from the path he’d found himself on. The new path he tried to take instead led him to the clutches of the Darkhold, an ancient and evil tome of magic that tried to turn him into a new mask, a new tool for Gods older and deader than existence. It also led him to the path of then-Agent Coulson and his SHIELD team. As Loki wrested himself onto a new and hard-fought road, now somewhat aware of what he had once been and could still too-easily become, these Agents became grudgingly, cautiously, his allies. He has since chosen willingly to fight alongside them, or to at least accept their company and existence without the war and the threats he finds familiar._
> 
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> _And now, accused of the greatest monstrosity of his life and awaiting the most final of consequences, he needs at his side the one thing he himself has never been - an honest man._

“ _But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one...” ~ Mark Twain_

. . .

Prologue: The Book Thief

. . .

From his perch in the high and crystalline spire, Loki could look out upon the sprawling arc of the City that was fully a library and no true city at all. Omnipotence City was its name: some legends among younger races suggested it was where all the Gods of the universe entire came to palaver and plan, and, he supposed as he watched impossible clockwork birds flit through the clean, still air below him, there was probably at least one version of this City amongst the layered multiverse that was indeed so mighty as all that.

But this City, untroubled by the dark things at work among the galaxy that nestled around the worlds he knew, was only a sanctum for the holy word and the devouring mind. Its omnipotence, so the dry scholar's joke went, came from the notion that if one could consume all the knowledge contained in its endless winding halls, why then of _course_ that being would be omnipotent.

Also, dead of frosty old age.

Loki felt no compulsion to try this challenge, leaning out just far enough to look at the fine green field far below his visitor's spire. He had other things on his mind, and his hands remained clasped peacefully in his lap while his fine armor of emerald and gold and black remained laid neatly aside. There was no need to present himself as anything other than what he was for a time – a silent pilgrim among the stacks, one of millions, there to find an answer to a nigh-unanswerable question.

The softest noise scraped through the room behind him and he permitted a thin smile of true amusement. There then was the second and unexpected question he found while chasing after his first: how to steal a book from a world that was a city that was a library where the entire unspoken function of the place is to prevent such crimes?

Loki's gaze flickered to his right without moving his head. There he could see the reflection along the closest edge of tall mirror, and the mirror caught the reflection of a wide and squat chalice he'd thought to leave in careful position on the desk he used most. On the desk was his bag – a simple satchel that carried books from the stacks to the rented rooms. The only journey some harmless tomes were permitted to make, and that under careful watch and track by the librarians. He'd had no interest in testing their patience himself, though he was sure that would have surprised those humorless figures to know. They checked him thoroughly at the end of each day's visit, for of course they knew his name.

Some days had passed since he first noticed the anomaly attached to his bag with no small delight and surprise. A tiny pocket of illusion; not one of a master mage, but a functional enough piece of the art. And that illusion held a net and in the net was an object. Almost certainly a book about to be successfully stolen, he marveled. How many times previous since his arrival in the City had there been this passenger? He didn't know. It tickled him, and when he realized he could not disturb the magick'd netting without leaving a mark for its maker to find, he decided to eventually try this other tactic instead.

The next morning, that unknown object was gone. And the next. And the third day. And so he left the chalice and the mirror and thought to doze peaceably in the high window, his back fully turned to the room. That might not be enough, but whoever the thief was, they might be growing confident as their game succeeded. It was time to find out.

The stifled click of his door gave way to a whisper of fabric. Through the slice of mirror he watched the smallish figure slink with aching slowness into the room. Robed, cowled, hooded – like the librarians of the City - but nonetheless he could tell the figure was watching him carefully for movement.

Loki gave a soft, dozy yawn and scratched at the arm of his deep green tunic, easing himself into a more comfortable position. His eyes remained sharp and alert as the mirrored figure froze. And then, when he did little else except breathe slowly and deep, the thief continued to creep forward.

The matter was done in seconds after that. Three noiseless steps to cross to the desk, a flicker of simplistic magic across his bag, and a book smaller than the palm of a child disappeared into the folds of a robe. And then they were gone, the door pulled back into place and locked once more.

Loki might have applauded. Instead he smiled, a child's earnest one. There were surprises yet in the universe, and mischief to admire. He wished the thief the best of continued luck. And too soon after, he worried just a little that his wish had inadvertently cursed them instead. It probably wasn't the first time he'd had that effect.

. . .

Not the next day, where the net was hurriedly made and he feared the thief's trick would fall apart and alert the City's guardians. Nor the next four, where he looked at the figures of the dozens of librarians that kept watchful eye on him, and saw none that matched his creeping visitor's shape.

It was on the fifth day that the roaring alarms filled the visitor's spires while the gates of every building flung themselves shut with unstoppable speed.

. . .

To no small credit, the robed figure wasn't frozen in fear when Loki flung open the door of his room to look. They'd just left with prize in hand as he pretended to nap on a long lounging chair with some heavy tome of ethics by his hand. The target was a larger volume this time; he could still see it peeking at the edge of the thief's heavy sleeve. He wondered if that might have been why this day of all days the alarms tripped, but it hardly mattered. The unearthly sirens continued to scream their warning and as he watched the figure scramble for some hiding place, some secondary plan to stow their thievery, he made his decision. “Get back in here!” he hissed.

Now the figure _did_ freeze, looking back over the tall cowl at him. “You want to be caught, then? I think both of us know perfectly well what happens to thieves here. Quick!”

He jutted his thumb towards the door and the robes flowed and rushed behind him. “By the curtains, then further in. Do not move. Breathe little. I've got to work fast. I'm quite sure you're at least somewhat aware of what this entails.” The figure backed towards where he indicated and now he could at least see the shape of a questioning face. “Of course I'll do my best. It's my arse as well if they see through this.” He snapped his fingers as the figure – _she,_ he realized, though the features were dim and still-hid – took her place and waited.

He did what he could and a little more, extrapolating from the thief's own illusive game and adding a few little flairs of his own mastery. The book he had to tear from her grasp and fling unceremoniously out the window. She stared up at him from the depths of her hood, the eyes clearly furious. “Nothing to be done for it. Your muted mask is still applied, you can look for it later amidst the grass if we're not both vaporized. The librarians won't go out after they put the lights down, but I'm sure this you know.”

And the guards when they swept his floor, found nothing.

When they were gone, she rushed through the room once more, ready to flee. “The door will be unlocked next time,” he called after her. “Keep to your game if you like.”

She whirled on him. He got a glimpse of a thin and bony face this time; not quite human, not quite Kree nor Xandarian. No trace of the Nine Realms' bloodlines. Nothing he could identify. She seemed mostly eyes in the harrowed face, dark ones that expressed more of what she didn't bother to say, and in them was some gratitude and a healthy dose of cautious alarm.

He smiled at her, disquieted for some reason he couldn't put a finger on. “You trade on my name and reputation to steal a trick for yourself. If they caught _me_ with your prizes by your mistake, well, who cries for Asgard's Loki? I can't help but give that some admiration and you have not made an enemy.” She took another step away. “The night's watch, I've no theories on how to avoid that and reclaim your book. Except that if there is no light when they patrol, then they need none. But I'm sure if you've got this far, you've some notions yourself.” He saluted her with two fingers to his forehead. “Travel well, thief. Better luck tomorrow.”

When she was gone and the door shut again, his brow furrowed as he realized the source of his disquiet.

Nothing to her face he could recognize – and yet he felt as though he _did_.

. . .

She did not return that next tomorrow. She did the day after. And that was his silent company for a time, as he chased his own question and observed her at play against her own. So it was until the evening, some few weeks later, where the book thief found him at his desk in something like despair.

. . .

His grey-green gaze glittered up at her in her librarian's stolen robe, the dark eyes hooded in fleeting, curious concern. “Oh, what?”

She said nothing, only watched his pallid face twitch.

“Go about your business and leave. It's nothing for you.”

She said in a dull and raspy voice, “I see the books you borrow. A hard question you're reading around. Final ones. I always notice.”

“And the books you take?”

A thin-lipped smile. “Not for you. Not for anyone.”

“Right, the book thief does in truth a public service.” He waved her away, feeling freshly irritated when she didn't move. “I did you a favor, you can do me one and not stare.”

“Is that the favor you ask?” The way she said it drew his attention sharply back to her and the disquiet returned. “I pay my debts. Always. I refuse to cheat.” She peered down at him, dark eyes glinting. “Is it what you ask?”

“Oh, we're _bargaining_ now.” Loki sighed to cover his disturbance, looked away to think. “No. It isn't.”

“Then I'll stare as I like,” droned the book thief, a dry taste of humor in a voice that seemed unused. It pulled the whisper of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “You were right.”

“What?”

“They do not see at night. They listen and they smell. And if there is nothing for neither...”

“Nothing to track. Well done, I suppose.”

“I felt some pride.” She clasped gloved hands together and sat on the other side of his desk, still regarding him with wide and unfathomable eyes. “Your answer isn't here.”

“I've got my damned answers I think, sorry to disagree.”

She shook her head. “The things you're reading – they are static words. The action is alive and the living can change. Only the living can change.”

He thrummed his pale fingers on the old desk, considering that. Considering her. “Who are you?”

“A thief. Like you. A bit different. But you gave a favor. Freely. And now we must deal with each other.”

“Then I'll consider that, too, amidst all my other problems.” He was growing outright unnerved and reached for the flask of wine he'd scrounged up just before getting his morose on. “A drink?”

She smirked, seeing plain on his face that he knew she wouldn't accept. “No.”

“Then do please go away and let _me_ drink. I'll consider the matter of our debts later.” He popped the cork free and poured some old, red vintage into the fat chalice he'd used to first spy her with. “I appreciate your concern,” he muttered to her disappearing back. “Whatever the hell you are.”

. . .

A handful of books still passed through the satchel's net, whispered away by the thief as Loki continued to contemplate what he now held close. Idle re-reads and less hefty questions mulled over and more than a few flagons of wine drunk as the rush of robes marked the cycle of days. He had his answers, so he felt. What he researched now was his convictions.

. . .

Now the time Loki waited for her to arrive for her stolen book: dressed in his fine black armor and his eyes full of determination, once more at the borrowed desk. All his books were gone from the limp satchel and his fingers were steepled against each other. “I've my favor to ask, and an apology.”

She plucked the tiny tome from its hidden place, interlacing her gloved fingers around it. He saw a black spine and a silver sigil he couldn't identify. “The apology first. I like those.”

“You're about to lose your free ride, I regret. I'm done here, and I leave at the next lighting of the City.”

She nodded slowly. “Understandable. It's been... a great help, Loki of Asgard. And a matter of some small surprise.”

“How so?” He watched as she answered him with silence and an enigmatic smile. “All right, then. Let me explain what I will need...”

When he was done, she accepted his request with a quick nod. He watched her leave one last time and wondered again what he had committed to, and to a lesser extent, when. “Mother Fate cares not to be scorned,” he murmured to himself, thinking over past deeds and misdeeds. “She'll want me back on old roads, and this one I've taken rides right close beside.”

_But the living can change,_ came the dull echo. _Only the living can change._

“I intend to live,” he whispered for his own sake. “To keep my changes. And to do that...”

He fell silent, unwilling to finish. Pain crossed his face and he was grateful no one could see.

 


	2. Son of Coul

It _probably_ wasn't really one of Peggy Carter's own watches, but Director Phil Coulson wanted to believe. He flexed his fingers carefully, the watch's thin band of stamped Italian leather and fragile golden clasps removed and set just out of reach so he wouldn't fingerprint it up again. Of course it was all more sturdy than it looked – a SHIELD agent's watch was a critical tool and made as tough as one - but he still felt like Indiana in the forgotten temple, judging the weight of the golden idol and unwilling to make mistakes.

Coulson fumbled around for his best pair of jeweler's pliers as he looked down at the exposed guts behind the iridescent watchface, then pursed his lips to concentrate. _Of course they're in my jacket pocket._ He reached down and patted at said jacket, draped over the back of his chair. And, as promised, there they were. He pulled them out, an unlikely gift from an unlikely ally.

_These pliers cannot ever be lost,_ read that old note, written in Loki's fine and elegant script. _Now that they have touched your hands, they will always come home._ The note itself was kept in a private file, mostly as a souvenir of the huge gamble he'd taken on a half-mad alien demigod. A gamble that seemed, so far, paid back. And the pliers acted as advertised – he'd panicked once after a fugue state, realizing that they were supposed to be on the desk where he'd last set them down and that desk was now a criss-crossed carved mess. When he shoved his hands in his pockets to calm himself down and think things through, he would later swear he _felt_ them appear in his palm.

Firmly pinching the tool between his fingers, he leaned in ready to jiggle the offending bits of broken metal out of place. He bit once at his lip, focusing carefully on his target and blocking out everything else.

The second the tips of the pliers hit a cracked cog, all hell broke loose. Nonplussed, Coulson set the pliers down and looked up at the flashing alarms and the speakers carrying the world's most obnoxiously designed klaxon. “Okay, really?”

“ _We got a breach, Director.”_ Koenig's voice layered over the siren almost immediately. _“Dude is whacked, stacked, and he doesn't have a lanyard. I think I can ID him though but... Uhhh.... I'm having a little trouble... uhh... slowing him down.”_

“Define stacked?”

The intruder's voice rang strident and powerful through the Playground's halls. _“SON OF COUL? 'TIS IT TRUE? MY FRIEND LIVES AFTER ALL?”_

Coulson bent his head back towards his desk, scratching his fingers across the deep lines in his forehead. “Okay.”

Skye's voice replaced Koenig's, hushed and obviously impressed. _“Oh wow, is that seriously Thor? When you define stacked, Phil, that dude is stack incarnate. Can I, uh, help subdue him or whatever? I'm free.”_

“Just... just point him towards my office, please. Don't engage beyond that; don't pick a fight. It won't end well for the joint's structural integrity.” He quit scratching and settled for rubbing both hands hard along the sides of his face. Then he stood up and pulled his jacket back on, tugging it and smoothing it back into professional place.

 . . .

Thor all but staggered into the office, and for a wonder, he at least remembered to use the door gently. He looked down over the smaller human, studying him with his mouth slightly agape as his strong hand let go of the door's handle. “My brother did not lie,” he said, his voice startled and on the edge of restrained joy. “You _do_ live.”

“Yeah... I know I should have told somebody. It's complicated.”

“Gods of my fathers.” Thor looked at the floor and the tips of his armored boots for a moment, still absorbing what he saw. He stepped forward and grasped both of Coulson's arms with his hands, clenching them tight in a warrior's emotional greeting. Phil tried to not wince, focusing on the shiny scales of the man's armor. Thor was at least making an effort to go light on the grip, and, hey, it was nice to see he made the big guy that happy. Better times. A wave of nostalgia hit him and he stared over the Asgardian hero's shoulder at the old SHIELD logo, trying to center himself again.

When Thor lifted his face again, it wore a serious expression. “He said that when I saw the truth, to apologize to you for revealing it so.”

“Well, that's... something.” Coulson gave it the best smile he could, lifting both his eyebrows to counterbalance his mixed emotions.

“I did not believe when he called you an ally. That word from him had the weight of the word ' _friend,'_ but that of course seemed impossible. For he killed you, didn't he? We were told of your death and the telling carried such pain within it.”

Phil winced. “I got better. It's... also complicated. And, for the record, I haven't seen him since close to Christmas.”

Thor nodded. “So I was told. Son of Coul, I come on a difficult matter. My brother asks a favor of his ally, a matter of some debt not yet settled.” He stepped back into the red drape of his cloak, bobbing his head diffidently. “It must be that you come to Asgard and hear of his need. I was bade to say that once you have done that much, whether or not you accept his charge, that debt is considered paid and ended.”

Coulson took that all in, feeling the kind of dread that comes with a visit from a grim-faced police officer at about four in the morning. “It's genuinely terrific to see you, and I completely respect whatever's going on, but I'm kinda in the middle of some serious responsibilities here. I'm not really in a place where I can just jaunt off-world.” He shut up, caught realizing that he'd found himself in the sort of life where 'jaunting off-world' was even a thing.

“He tried to explain a kingdom's matters to me, and yet still bids that you consider his plea for his sake.”

“It's not- nevermind.” Phil shook his head. “It's not that simple.”

“Nor is this, my old friend. For my brother, this is a matter of life and death itself.”

The dread crawled further through his mind, haunted by a jackal's smile.

 . . .

“I'm leaving you in charge.” May stared at him over tightly crossed arms as he dropped the order, openly unhappy now that it was only the two of them in his office. “Go ahead, let me have it.”

“It'd take an hour and Thor's going to finish eating everything in our fridge in twenty minutes or less.” She shook her head. “Phil. You know all my objections.”

“It's, well.” His voice trailed off. He took a hand out of his pocket and gestured with it in a kind of half-shrug. “It's decent timing at least. We're between storms. I can take a little while, see what happened that's such a big deal Loki felt he had to expose me.” The apology and the wonder and happiness on Thor's face regardless, he intended to give the guy some serious hell for that.

“Between, or in the middle of one good eye?”

He quirked a smile at the accidental old in-joke he'd shared with Fury, deciding against trying to explain it to her. “I might only be gone for a few hours, depending on whatever this is.”

“Yeah, whatever it is. He explain _why_ you've got to go all the way to Magic Planet to even find out what's going on?”

“For one thing, I figure it's just Loki. Presentation's always the thing with him. If he's in the middle of something big, he'll want to lay it out the way he's got it in his head. It's like asking a duck to moo to get a straight letter of inquiry out of him.”

“Which can be an enormous warning sign. Even if he plays straight, and I admit he has, he seldom bothers to make it look that way. How can you know if this is finally the time he pulls a fast one on all of us again?”

She wasn't wrong. He nodded, acknowledging that. “That's a risk, yeah. For what it's worth the other reasoning in play here is that Asgard likes to kick it old school. Thor indicates this also just kinda how things can go, so it's not really all just Loki putting on a show.”

“He's in trouble, so you're to go running while he's the one that knows all the rules. Maybe he's not deliberately putting on a show, but it's going to be a regular three-act number with a dance intermission anyway.” She was still giving him that long, dour stare. “You know that.”

“Okay, are you just devil's advocating or do we all still just straight up hate his guts and nobody wants to outright tell me?”

Her shoulders sagged and she looked away, her hard eyes softening. “I don't hate him, Phil. I still can't bring myself to trust him, and if you're getting called out into the open for something you're _told up front_ is serious trouble, I can't help but consider that with extreme caution. It'd be a long time before I gave him half the chances you do, and I don't know that being careful to question his motives should ever stop being a thing.” She shook her head. “It's mostly advocating, but the question's a real one and dumping the job here on me is-”

“Yeah, you're never really up for that. I know. I'm sorry.”

She glanced at him askance. “You really think you're just going to show up, listen to his spiel, and then say 'yeah, no' and take the first rainbow gate back?”

A shrug. “I dunno. But you know I've been dying to get a look at Asgard. It sounds pretty wild.”

She clucked her tongue at him. “Phil...”

“You're right to show the other side. There's always a risk. But.” He contorted the side of his face, nibbling at the inside corner of his mouth for a second as he did so. “He's in something, and for whatever reason, he called me first. That's kinda fascinating.”

“And you're actually touched.” She gave him a little smirk, one that widened as he gave her a disbelieving look. “You _like_ him, even though you know better. He's your mysterious little drinking buddy that once jabbed you to death with a stick. It's like a surreal BBC comedy with you two. You invited him to the Christmas party and he insulted the cranberry sauce. And the décor.”

He reared his head back. “You make it sound so weird.”

“It's weird, Phil.”

“I wanna go see the big golden throne and the shiny buildings and listen to mighty alien ballads and find out what ridiculous crap Loki's gotten himself into. Is that so wrong of me?”

She uttered an undignified _ugh_ and turned to walk out of the office. “I'll see you a few days or a week or something. Try to not wind up in the middle of an intergalactic war.”

“I'm _really_ not sure that's a joke.”

Looking over her shoulder at him from the doorway, she said, “I'm not sure either. Good luck, Phil. Steal a keg for us.”

 


	3. The Advocate

Loki's quarters were fine and finely made; a stunningly wide expanse made up of comfortable lounges trimmed with perfectly laid fabrics, beautifully carved desks of ancient woods topped neatly with books, and shelves lining the golden-trimmed walls loaded full with _more_ books. Little carvings dotted the stacks; small and pretty figurines made from some unidentifiable mineral in ages where humans were still huddled together under the night and seeing only Gods in the stars. Soft lights held motionless high in the air, and Coulson couldn't tell if they were Loki's magic or Asgardian technology. A wide window that was flanked on either side by translucent green curtains opened to a breathtaking view of Asgard entire, rooted at its base by a cushioned seat built into the wall itself. Through all the opulence was the reminder that, for all else he'd ever been, the Director now stood in the private territory of a Prince.

That prince paced in long strides across his room in an uncharacteristically simple green tunic and black trousers, an outfit so casual that it made him look nearly defenseless. Even in a borrowed black hoodie he'd lost none of his regal distance, but now he seemed diminished. In his grasp was yet _another_ book, its spine well supported by one long-fingered hand while the other gently flitted through its pages. Coulson sensed a subtle continuity in the local architecture, and it wasn't sports-related. “It will seem a lie, but it's the truth – I was not certain you'd come.” His voice was hesitant and he didn't bother to look at his guest.

“Well, we're both kinda big on paying debts. It's a regular running theme. Kinda like this room.” He took a hand out of his jacket pocket and jerked his thumb to indicate the stacks. “Did we ever hook you up with a Kindle?”

“I prefer the tomes in their physicality.”

“We got candles with that new book smell. Could really open up this... already giant room... for more stuff. Like a whole other house. You could run one hell of a side business off Airbnb, you know. Go straight.”

His jokes drew a weak smile. “This is where I grew up. Where I can mark many changes of my life. And it may well be where it ends.” He looked away. “Given choice, I suppose I would prefer it in familiarity and the scent of old parchments.”

Coulson didn't say anything to that, thinking worried thoughts instead. He took in the room again, and its enormous open window.

Loki glanced back and saw clearly what the human was thinking. “What I stand accused of, Coulson, I cannot run from. It is too vast. In this, the universe entire is as good as a glass cage. As your own world's songs know – _and the rock cried out, no hiding place._ So this time I'll abide by my oath to stay and to not run, and the kingdom will know that I have no choice but to take that as hard truth.”

“What do they say you did?”

Loki closed the book with a soft _snap._ “An absolutely unforgivable and irreversible thing.”

“That's still not directly answering my question.”

“I know.” He set the book on one of the desks and leaned his hip against it. “Here is my plea, and you can accept it or not. I'll bear no judgment on that. I need someone to stand for me before the arbiter's court and the judgment of the All-Father – I cannot do it for myself.”

“Why not?”

A quick shrug was his first answer. “One reason is legalese. The accused – particularly noble – requires a representative to assess the circumstances and present the accused's version.”

“Okay, so you need a defense attorney to plead your innocence. I got a _whole_ Rolodex-”

“It's not about pleading my innocence.” The words came out like cold lead. It gave Coulson a fresh whisper of apprehension. “The other reason is that even if I could speak for myself, it would be the worst possible option. This you know clear – I could never be believed, not with the reputation I've so carefully wrought for myself. And so I need an honest man in my stead. One whom Asgard would stand behind at need – and Thor is himself Asgard.” The smile reappeared, slow and heavy with some private irony. “I need you to look at what they will show you, listen to what they will tell you, and then you must go forth to make your own judgments.”

Coulson cocked his head. “I feel like I'm not quite getting something.”

Loki spread his hands. “The kingdom forges ahead only as quickly as it must, and so you will have some time to study the incident to your own satisfaction. At the end, you will present your findings to the All-Father and the others who will stand in opposition. Of course, this is a quicker matter and that time will be marked in days and perhaps a handful of weeks at best, not years as another circumstance might. It would do no few people a kindness to see me executed in even shorter order, but my own title and place still buys some lease.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that. What was that 'go forth' part?”

“I've arranged guardians for you; travelers that can take you where you need to follow the trails you might find.” His voice regained some of its old droll. “I must give disclosure; If you accept, try to be sure no one outbids my investment in the duo I've put to your side. I had to look rather far afield for someone that didn't care _who_ was paying them, only that the credits were good. Their loyalty is thus transient, but I did pay well by any measure.”

“Okay, yeah, I _did_ get that part. You want me to go _Magnum PI_ on this.”

Loki peered quizzically at him. “Now I'm lost.” He shook his head. “Hardly matters. What I ask of you is what you _do,_ Director of SHIELD. Puzzle apart the mystery of what's in plain sight and find out what it truly means, not only for my sake but for the incident's sake. Hound for the truth entire on your own terms where another might give you only a lie. I ask you to do this without my voice to guide you, only your own honesty and conscience. Specifically you, I have no one else.”

“Wouldn't Thor?”

Something crossed Loki's face, looking like a wound. “I cannot. It would bring everything to ruin. So I ask – will you stand for me?”

Coulson studied the fallen demigod's face and thought to himself that, no, he was probably not getting back to Earth in time for the football game. “I'm not going to like what I'm going to be told out there, am I?”

“Few would.”

Coulson closed his eyes and realized he also forgot that he was going to chew Loki out for giving him away to an Avenger. It could wait, he decided. It was falling kind of way down the priority list. “You know if I go out there and wind up agreeing with whatever they concluded, that's what I'm going to go with, right? You know I'm not going to default to trying to get your ass out of the fire just because of the recent past. If you did this thing, and I can prove it, it's on you.”

“There is no other moral choice. I expect nothing less and nothing more of you.”

_You're a good and honest man, Coulson, may all the powers of the universe save you from yourself._ Coulson regarded the prince, his own face tired and heavy with the echo of the words. Yes, the dark prince could tell the truth once in a while. If he so chose. “I'll stand for you.”

“Then brace. The guards will come to take you to the inner chambers. And then you will see... but you will not be permitted to see me again until it is over. It will be better that way, so I suppose.” A faint smile. It looked like a farewell. “Good luck. Thank you, Coulson. Our debts are done. Now you owe only truth itself.”

. . .

Coulson watched the holographic footage repeat, the details it was showing crystalline clear in their horribleness. His hands clenched on either side of the circular table, staring through the planet as it exploded in slow motion into Thor's haunted face. “From the beginning. One more time.”

“My friend-”

“Just show me.” He swallowed hard as Thor controlled something on his end. The display winked out of existence and then began again. He reached out, already learning he could pause it by touch. “Okay. Walk me through again, in your words.”

“I can summon once more the arbiters...”

“No, please. Your words. You're a little more clear than they are, and you have to remember all of this is really new to me.”

Thor nodded slowly. “The display comes from a Xandarian trader, skirting the very edge of accessible territory. The planet you see is small and excluded; kept safe from interference. It was recorded automatically by their vessel and handed over immediately once they realized what they had.”

“Prime Directive.” Thor glanced at him. “Never mind. I'm thinking this through out loud.”

“Necessarily to be subject to that exclusion, it is – it _was –_ inhabited. Scholars indicated three different interrelated species of intelligent life and another evolving; multiple ecological regions and countless biological systems contained within, natural resources of value to other systems. A planet like any other, full of possibility and yet young and early in its development. So we agreed to leave it alone, that no one may travel there.”

Phil reached out and let the display continue. A greenish flash burned across the curved horizon of the doomed world. “We believe that was the first burst of the weapon used.” Coulson mentally marked that down. “Scant hours later-” the display sped forward to shorten the wait and then slowed down again as something visible cracked across the world's plates. There had been water there, and he could _see_ it fade into steam. He felt ill. Seconds later, the planet was annihilated; scraps of massive rubble drifting into the place where the sphere had once been. “Some form of an energy device, Heimdall saw that much when it occurred. We haven't recovered it. It may have been consumed in the destruction.”

Thor now reached out to speed the recording and to focus in tightly on a speck. It showed a tiny, rust-brown vessel speeding away. “And that ship. Stolen from a ravager – hardly a crime there. Archaic transport. And it bore a single life sign within.” The data scrolled, noting the figure's temperature and dimensions. “My brother runs cold, one of many reasons he was identified as the likely suspect.”

Phil tapped at the display next, checking various dock logs from local planets. He tried to not focus on how weird the whole thing was. Mostly, it read pretty much like airport tracking. “Right, all this stuff. He was close to the area before, and picked up out there after. He didn't fight.” He noted it through. It did make for an incriminating pattern of events. Not a total lock, not by his measure, but he saw the logic. Still. It didn't gel completely. “This doesn't make sense. Not from out of nowhere. You've got no purpose for this, no motive. Loki doesn't do _anything_ without a purpose.”

“He has been hidden well since we threw him from our stolen throne. I can no longer fathom his motives, only that they are ever dark.” Thor glanced up as Coulson started to move. The human was looking away, his expression tight with thought. “I heard no word until that day of hell when the Corps brought him to us in chains once more. He told me grudgingly of some places he'd been. Including Earth.”

“He was on Earth an awful lot,” Phil said, still distracted by thinking over the evidence. _Why?_

“As you say. I must believe you.” Thor shook his head and moved away. “We must have this matter sorted and done, Coulson. Xandar is afraid again and they have faced the risk of genocide too much of late. The Nova Prime presses hard on us to act swiftly. The rest of our own realms stand tense. The Jotun send also terse words and my father heeds them carefully. They too have memories, and all these seem convinced of the matter's cause.”

“Jotun?” Coulson's focus sharpened back to Thor, recognizing the word. “Lady Sif mentioned them when I asked a question once. Who are they?”

“Monsters.” Thor sighed. “Frost Giants. A great enemy and no honorable one. We have struggled against them and their brittle kingdom – nominally one of our Nine - for millennia and only now and again find some time of peace. Loki thought to end them entire for our Father's favor; this was the fight that drew me back to Asgard and the bridge fallen to ruin after. His first attempt at a great genocide. I fault him harshly for the attempt, a grim decision. No one race should be exterminated thus, though the war was, at one point, welcome enough. I do not wish their loss entire, but their dislike still burns us like their ice.”

“But you _do_ think they're monsters.” Coulson felt something cold settle into his stomach, some flash of unwanted comprehension at a memory – a burnt collar and the blue skin underneath, revealed at a moment of Loki's deepest weakness. Eyes that were, for a flash of microseconds, almost red. He looked away again, thinking hard about what that word 'monster' might mean to a cracking person.

“It is as we are raised to think of them.” Thor shrugged the fact away with heavy shoulders. Now his voice was determined. “Son of Coul, now that you have seen, you can still deny his wish. You have that right here. Leave his defense to me. He is my brother, and I will do all I can for him. He _cannot_ ask you to prove his innocence!”

Coulson looked back at him, his eyebrows knotting together as he understood something that was lost on the earnest, pleading Thor.

“...He didn't.”

. . .

Coulson had an honor guard on his way to Asgard's distant, almost detached port; its sole concession to its place in the greater galaxy. Five flanking golden warriors that marched with him towards a bustling cacophony of traveling merchants and bizarre, improbable spacecraft. Its bright chaos stood at odds with the rest of Asgard's elegant and clean metallic excess and he tried to not gawp like a tourist at beings and things that he'd never in his life expected to encounter. Even recent events on Earth – changing and inhuman events – did not detract from the sheer wild _newness_ of seeing for himself just how big and unusual his galaxy really was. Only the knowledge of why he was there damped his fascination. That, and to a far lesser extent, the faint sting behind his ear where Asgard's healers had fitted him with a temporary translation chip.

Given all the necessary access he would need to depart with the pair he was to meet, the guards took him to the edge of a much quieter hangar bay and left him there with low bows of obedience to a duty done. Bowing awkwardly back, he let himself in through the huge sliding door and then paused, trying to figure _this_ tiny scene the hell out.

“ _HEEEEEYYYYYYY, check out the human!”_ The small, hairy being that absolutely could not in any way, shape, or form, be a raccoon came sauntering towards him with a shrug. “NICE suit!” The hairy being brayed raucous, masculine, almost obnoxiously Jersey-like laughter at his own words and turned to look at the tall, thickly trunked tree incongruously planted in the middle of the hangar. “You like this?”

“I am Groot,” said the tree in pleasant greeting, the deep and resonant voice coming from a split in the bark beneath two black and child-wide eyes. The tree unfolded itself – _himself_ \- from where he had been rooted and waiting, and began to move towards him with organic slowness, one branch-fingered hand reaching out to say hello.

“Okay,” said Coulson, unable to come up with more than a baffled whisper.


	4. Awesome Mix Vol. 1

“Aight, so this is what we got. We got access, we got transport codes, we got multiple flight plans to choose from, and I got a clean record. Again. You kn- Don't worry about that, I didn't say that, it ain't important.” Rocket deftly slapped around the control panel of the hot rod yellow spacecraft, the floating world of Asgard falling into a distant speck among billions of other stars. Coulson stuffed down the instinctive first reaction of moderate terror at the vastness of open space and cleared his throat. His pilot didn't notice. “We got free time, a cleared and hefty deposit, and we got some tunes to remind you of home. I mean, for what the jobber paid, what's throwin' in a few creature comforts, am I right, Groot?”

“I am _Groot,”_ underlined Groot, low and happy.

Coulson nodded gamely in time to the Raspberries singing “Go All the Way” over the ship's internal speakers. The acoustics were _amazing,_ he had to admit. “Yeah, what's up with the music? I didn't think you got FM out here.”

“I got this guy I contract with sometimes, this Quill. He's a peon but he's alright, 'kay?” Rocket waved his hand to show what little he thought of said peon. “Humie like you, pretty much. I cadged a copy of this 'mixtape' off him, to keep it cozy 'round here for ya. Anyway, travel music.” He squinted his beady eyes at his co-pilot, who was bopping his leafy head in perfect rhythm. “Also, Groot likes the tunes.”

“I am Groot!” Branch-fingers made a passable attempt to snap in time to the lyrical beats. Tiny leaves on his shoulders swayed with him. The black eyes turned to regard Coulson, bark eyelids narrowing in an eager question. “Iamgroot?”

Coulson lifted both his eyebrows. “Ahh...”

“He's asking where's our first stop,” explained Rocket. He scratched a long nail along the cockpit display, pulling up location codes. “Gonna stick my tail out and say you want to start with the crime scene, so to speak.”

“That's a good call.” Coulson nodded, finding familiar ground and mentally sticking his feet to it. “I'd like to run our own scans of the area, if we can.”

The raucous laughter brayed again. “Buddy, if I can't do it, I can build it.”

He thought over Loki's almost sheepish warning. “That gonna cost extra?”

“He didn't tell ya the terms of the contract? For a legendary dickhead prince, he's pretty tactful about his business. Figure that. You got an open tab, up to a decent point. Murder costs extra.” He added the last bit matter-of-factly.

Coulson pictured a pale green diner's receipt with a basic breakfast plate charge, murder tacking on an extra .50 after the coffee and a slice of apple pie. “Not gonna need that.”

“You _hope,_ humie.” Rocket sniffed. “Frickin' Asgard, man.”

“I _am_ Groot.”

He blinked. The sardonic tone in Rocket's voice was not what he would have expected regarding the world of magic and heroes that he'd seen. “You're not a fan?”

“Eh.” Rocket shrugged. “They pay their bills on time.”

Coulson looked away, realized he was staring into the incalculable depths of trillions of light-years of space, and then settled for staring at the back of the tree-man's head instead. “I appreciate Loki's hiring of you guys for me, especially the transport side. But it's Asgard I'm mostly dealing with. Do I really need guardians?”

“You Asgardian yourself?”

“No...”

“'Kay. Yeah, they're crazy honorable folks. Always up for a good fight, which that I gotta respect. Here's the crunch, though, humie.” Rocket whirled in his seat to click his tiny claws together, staring up into Coulson's face. The sardonic tone was back. “They honorable to _Asgardians._ Maybe they like _you_ , cool.” One pointed finger reached out to tap him hard on his suit's lapel. “Ride that comet in your best duds till ya both wink out. But you get a little too outside their comfort zone, like me and Groot here-”

Soulful: “ _i am groot.”_

“They're polite, 'kay? Yeah, they'll probably keep their word. Xenophobic as frickin' hell if you're not a big-ass ripped warrior guy, though, what I'm saying. I mean, you know the gossip, right?”

“What gossip?” Coulson shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. Rocket's words were matching up with Thor's offhanded description of one of their nine kingdoms a little too well for his own conscience.

The furry head reared back, surprised. “Comes from your own planet, even. Get this – the favorite prince there, you know, the hefty famous guy that _doesn't_ threaten planets every other week or whatever? They say he's got the likey-likey for an Earthling.”

Jane Foster. Turned out, he _did_ know the gossip. But not this perspective.

“Odin used to be _piiiiiiiiissssssssssssed.”_ More Jersey-style laughter in time to “Cherry Bomb.” Rocket calmed down. “He's cooled out a bit on the topic, so goes the story – though what's weird is... nevermind, ain't important. But fact is, they make a real big show out of their 'nine worlds' or whatever being their sacred charge. Even respect some of 'em individually, sure. But you wanna get close and cuddly? Bro. Man. Bro.” He shook his head, whiskers whipping and curling with the motion. “Like taking an A'askvarii to dinner in a desert.”

Coulson's face scrunched up. Groot leaned in towards him and whispered confidentially, “ _iam. Groot.”_ He got the explanatory gist from Groot's tone – not the best choice for a first date. He nodded back politely.

Rocket watched them confer, then spun back towards his console. “Anyway, you wanna go to Ex-Planet Deadsville, poor saps, take a couple hours. I'll fire the autopilot. Take a nap in the back if you want. It's pretty clean. I did laundry... you know. Sometime recently.”

“You got a data pad I can use?” Coulson fumbled in his pocket for the device he'd taken from Thor, a small crystal that he decided to think of as some sort of universal super-charged thumb drive.

Without looking up, Rocket yanked a filthy semi-flexible strip of polymer out from under the console and shoved it over his puffy orange-wrapped shoulder at Phil. “If your doohickey doesn't yammer right with it, slap the strip around. Connection's flaky but it'll work fine if you give it the business. Also, don't root around the files already there.”

Coulson gave him a sharp glance. “Why?”

“I'm just saying, man. Uh, family pictures.” Rocket waved him off as he organized complex calculations on his pilot's screen. “Have fun studying dead people.”

. . .

Thor looked at the book in his hand, the lightness and cheap make of it telling him it came from Earth. He studied the cover with tight-browed bemusement, looking into the dark drawn eye of the animal portrayed there. “Amusements from a planet you once seemed to hold little care for?” He looked up from it to find the face of his brother, sat in his private window-seat with one leg slung casually over the other, deep in the depths of some other work.

“I didn't finish the story when I first encountered it,” Loki muttered, not looking up to meet his brother's eyes. “I'd rather lost my taste for it at the time. That much has been remedied.”

Thor put the book down amidst the sprawl of others, still studying the art. “What is this beast I see portrayed?”

“It's a rabbit, Thor. It's a book about tiny bunnies, some harmless vegetarian species of Earth.” Green-grey eyes flickered up briefly to check Thor's disbelieving face. “Fleeting, fragile creatures chasing themselves away from the creeping shadow of their demise, struggling against it with all their meager power. And all the world is their enemy.” He sighed. “It's rather better than it sounds.”

“To flee from.” Thor snorted without rancor. “I don't understand.”

“Oh, they made an animated picture of it,” Loki drawled, unable to stop himself. “That might be simpler to follow.” He snapped the book in his lap shut, still not looking up for more than a glance.

“ _Must_ you, brother? Must you still play me with the razor's edge of your tongue?”

“Yes,” Loki whispered, his face necessarily and defensively blank. “How can I not?”

Thor sighed. Instead of leaving, he slid a heavy stool marked with a child's ancient carvings from underneath one of Loki's many desks and settled himself down on it. “Set Coulson free, Loki. Let me ask that, let me call him back and send him home. Don't tarnish a good man for your own neck.”

“Oh.”

Thor paused at the sound of the heavy, weary word before continuing. “I will stand in his stead. I will get you free of this, find a way to ensure you will live-”

“You believe I did this thing. There are no questions in you.”

“Loki...” The mighty Thor faltered against his brother's voice, now all bitterness and ice. “The death of a planet cannot be ignored. We cannot push it away. But if you'll tell me _why,_ perhaps I can at least get Father to agree to something else. Some less ultimate punishment.”

Loki looked up, his eyes gleaming with a mix of emotions so wild that his brother could not pick out any one. “And you would believe me? Y-yo-you'd take my words as a promise and stand with them as your own?”

Thor opened his mouth.

“You would _not._ Your question is a sham, a _ruse_ to look for some excuse to pin less blame to yourself should your gambit fail. You would try to save an idea of me, some kinder memory you yet cling to, but you won't actually look at _me_. You won't _listen.”_ The snarl paused, ragged in the air. “And I have no one to blame but myself for that, yes I know, but I won't compound my _own_ failures by reckoning my fate to the faithless.”

“Coulson cannot prove your innocence if you have none, brother-”

_ “BUT AT LEAST HE BEGINS IN THE CENTER!”  _ Loki found himself on his feet, swaying lightly with years' worth of unbottling rage trying to pour through his face. “The man I  _ killed,  _ he does me more honor than that deserves, allowed a single chance in the wake of what I am, what I have been, and he came to my aid when I asked,  _ brother.  _ The greatest offense I can commit to a single life and though he does not  _ forgive  _ what I did to him, he at  _ least  _ took a step beyond it with an open hand.” Another inhale, raspy and half-choked. “Not one here in Asgard would do that for me, not any longer and not ever again. The gate is closed. If my hands are on that gate, well, so 'tis, but you claimed to be my blood despite my blood and you cannot, you will not start from that center yourself.” He stared hot through Thor's speechless face. “Am I wrong? Do I  _ lie _ ?”

This was not a fight Thor could win cleanly. It was not a fight to be won at all. Stunned where he sat on Loki's old stool, he plunged down the only knife he had at hand, and immediately regretted it when the tip struck deep. “She loved you best, Loki.”

The change was immediate. The thin prince dropped back into the window-seat, his face going dead and white and blank. His eyes sold him out, and they were full-wide and damp. “Get out,” he said. There was nothing in his voice but faded parchment.

Thor studied his brother, wishing he could call back the words. He knew his broken kin now just well enough to see clearly the pain he tried to hide. He tried to layer them over with a kinder truth, his voice gentle. “I was jealous of that, you know.”

“You?” The mocking word had no teeth in it and the eyes would not look up again.

“Aye, Loki. She chose you, after all, when our father brought you home. For I think she knew you needed her most. I had Father and our warriors and all the strength I could chase. But from her, Loki, you stole all the smiles. She never lost hope in you.”

There was a soft and strangled noise left to whisper through the air. “I know perfectly well what I am. What I've done.”

“You're my brother.”

“Gods help you.”

“Let me help you instead.” Thor lifted a hand to try and reach across the room that was, as ever, a deep and unfathomable gulf.

“If you want to help me, brother... let my request stand. You cannot help me. I asked for the only one who can, and I must remain steadfast to that.” Sunken eyes drifted up unwillingly to meet Thor's. “If you honor your friend, then remain steadfast to him as well. If not to me.”

Thor let his hand drop without a sound. For a time they only looked at each, neither hearing the full truth of what the other was saying in the silence.


	5. Working the Scene

“All I ask is you don't make me rig you a suit so you can go out there to fondle the space rocks. That just never ends well, okay?”

“Just keep pulling data, please.” Coulson sat in Groot's abandoned chair, feeling numb through the horrified awe that kept his eyes on the screen. It was one thing to see an image and know intellectually, observe from a distance that a massive object was being destroyed. It was another to behold the empty place in the universe left behind, to watch numbers come in to tell of changes in cosmic waves, of ripples of ruined mass filtering out from an imploded central point to create a new field of debris in a galaxy that was, he now understood, both too big and too small.

Groot himself was staying in the back, away from the ship's displays. His light smile was gone and his eyes were hurt. Coulson had a lot of empathy for the tree-guy's look. Groot might not actually be an ent as Phil knew about them, but he seemed pretty shaken by the scene outside.

“Hope you weren't looking for the 'it was just an illusion' card to get played.” Rocket sighed and plucked at a rapid slipstream of data, giving it its own miniwindow on his display. “There was a planet, and it ain't anymore. It'd take time to drill it all through my own processors here, but I got the gist for ya. All the rubble's definitely from one world, matching the size and shape of the one previously recorded here. Had two moons; both got pushed hard out of orbit. We can go take a gander at 'em if you want; least one's pretty close. Both got probably pockmarked up pretty good. I tell you as a professional demolitionist, there ain't gonna be much on them you can't scan here.”

“What happens to them without their planet's gravity?”

“They'll drift along the trajectory they got knocked into by the boom 'til they get picked up by something else's grav field. Somebody already mathed it here on your data, it'll be a millennia before either of 'em get close to an inhabited world. So there's that, anyway.” Rocket shrugged. “Gonna be a few changes to starway maps, but that's life in the big galactic soup.”

Coulson tore his gaze from the screen to look at his hired pilot, a little thrown by the almost casual tone. “This sort of thing happen much?”

“Gets threatened a lot, doesn't happen daily at least. Typically takes a lot of big bang to do this, not a lot of ordinance lying around that does it.” Rocket's voice dropped, becoming slightly reluctant.

“Do you know something about that?” Coulson watched black lips twitch along the pointy teeth. “You know, I can depose you as an expert witness here.”

“I dunno what that means, bud.” Rocket shrugged. “Look, I'll level with you this much. The galaxy ain't thin on genocidal bags of crazy, okay? Before your freaky pal got stuck with charges, we knew personally about this guy that had a  _ real  _ hard-on for breaking up the Xandarian networks. Kree guy.”

“I've heard of the Kree.”

Rocket reared back, pretending to be impressed. “Oh  _ yeah _ , humie? You get the part where they're prone to fanatic streaks, genetic tampering, and occasionally wiping out enemy populations for funsies?”

Coulson looked evenly back at him. “I got some of that, yeah. I'm not a fan.”

“Huh.” The fake act gave way to a grudging bit of genuine respect. “This guy, Ronan, pulled a fast one on a guy even wackier than him, yoinked this scary little thingy out from under him. He gave a stunt like this his  _ real  _ best shot.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Now, I can't say a lot cuz you gotta 'depose' or whatever some people  _ way  _ higher up the food chain than me, but let's just say I might know a few things about savin' the galaxy.”

Phil kept a straight face, not about to buy that without a bucketload of citations to back up the claim. “Okay.”

“You don't believe me.”

He looked down at the comparative notes on his datapad. “Doesn't matter. Now, the energy sig-”

Rocket flung himself around, shouting towards the back of the ship. “ _ HEY GROOT, THIS GUY DOESN'T BUY WE SAVED THE  _ _ **FRICKIN'** _ _ GALAXY!” _

“I am Groot,” came the sedate response from inside one of the pod-rooms.

Rocket curled his paw into a fist and lifted a single finger. “Back me up here, Groot.”

The shadow of the tree-man slipped closer, head bowed so that he still didn't have to look at the screens and their morbid view. He turned the curved bark of his face towards Coulson cautiously, black eyes meeting his and nodding. Groot summoned up a smile, jerking his face away again from the screen. The effect was again childlike, earnestly touching. Him, Coulson believed on instinct. He looked back at Rocket apologetically.

“He's got kind of a thing about mass casualty events. He always did, but it's a little ramped up lately.” Rocket sighed. “It's okay, bud. Thanks.”

“iam... groot.” Groot shuffled back into the room and slid the door shut.

“I let my temper go. That coulda waited.” Rocket shoved his furry elbow onto the console and glanced up at Coulson, clearly blaming him for the moment, too.

“I'm sorry.” He meant it. The look on Groot's face was clearly pain.

“Yeah... you sound it.” Rocket puffed air through his nostrils, tickling his muzzle. “Aight, for the sake of the – have I mentioned this lately? -  _ fat sack of cash  _ I got for this babysitting job, we'll forget our tiff. You was askin'?”

Coulson tapped at one of the data windows, not even sure it was the right one. “The ordinance it takes to do this sort of thing, it sounds like you know what you're talking about there.”

“Baby, if it can't be blown, I can find a way to blow it.” Rocket abruptly looked up, wincing hard enough to ruffle the fur down his arms. “Wait. That came out super wrong.” He jabbed a nail towards Coulson. “Don't put that line in your depose. If you do, you will be fed to a flerken.”

“Deposition. I won't. I got your meaning. This anything like what your Kree guy tried to do?”

Rocket pulled and tagged a window showing fluctuating readings. “Naw. That little stone was a hell of a chunky number. There's no trace of something like that here and that would light up like a peep show in a white dwarf nightclub. Plus, your guy would probably be toast for messing with something like it. I guess. Maybe.” He shrugged. “You want to know more, let my stuff crunch numbers for a while.”

_ Little stone?  _ Coulson's mind tried to cross check that with something, couldn't quite find a match off the top of his head with that small amount of information. He filed it away and went back to his notes. “Okay. I want... a narrow look at what precisely blew the planet up. External or internal forces, targeted or a general spread-shot. Standard ballistics package, basically. The one Asgard gave me is still some sort of overview.” He shrugged, privately annoyed. “And now I guess they're going to let _ me _ do the hard work somehow.”

“ _ That  _ I follow.”

“What are the odds of finding the device in the debris?”

Rocket's words backed up the theory he'd heard from Thor. “Bad to frickin' terrible,  _ if  _ it still exists. Things like that have a tendency to consume themselves up on use because most people are amateurs.” Rocket preened. “They ain't like me. Anyway, it's easier to figure it out by the signatures left behind, then you look around for dealers for the components that'd be used to make the ord.” He looked up as Coulson nodded along. “Might as well pick out a meanwhile, that's a lotta data I'll be sorting for you.”

Phil checked his notes again. “They picked Loki up near...” He scrolled the filthy pad, wishing vaguely he had a travel bottle of antibacterial wash in his suit pocket. “An independent spaceport by someplace called Moord.”

“It's a hole. Not even a  _ good _ hole, mind. It's someplace crappy baby pirates wind up at when they want to look hard and maybe rack up their first few arrests by the Nova Corp. Get a rep in a soft kinda way.”

He scrunched his face, considering that. “Doesn't sound like Loki's sort of place.”

“Ain't gonna find clean sheets and a hot meal at a reasonable price there, I tell you that. He struck me like a high roller, the sort of guy that likes the crease pressed on his pants.” Rocket flickered his beady brown-black eyes down to Coulson's well-tailored trousers and didn't state the obvious. “I know where guys like that go, and it ain't Ravager Backwater Numero Zilch.”

“So why'd he get picked up there?” The question was quiet and thoughtful, a rhetorical meant for himself. He looked at Rocket, tapping the pad against his own chest. “How far away from here is that?”

Rocket swooshed aside the data and pulled up the local galactic map for Coulson to look at. “Straight shot, pinkie. Two hours direct flight from here.”

“Direct.”

He scraped his sharp nail along the glowing blue trajectory line to illuminate it. “Like,  _ literally  _ direct. Accounting for orbital drifts and other standard physics, it's sort of like, uh...” he racked his brain, wriggling his fingers as he did so. “Quill explained it. That thing on your planet called a turnpike.”

“So the story goes that he blew up a planet for some unknown reason, sheerly out of the blue. Then drove up the street to get a coffee in a crappy rest stop to say ' _ here I am, come get me' _ ?” Phil set his datapad down on the console with a thunk. “I don't buy it.”

“That's what the facts on record say.”

“Okay, but is it  _ all  _ they say?” He looked out at the vast debris field, growing thoughtful again. “I know Loki. Obvious isn't his style, but theatrics  _ are.  _ If he got picked up like that, it had a meaning. And the meaning wasn't 'hey, let's go slumming.' Not enough acts in that play and no room for the curtain call.” He looked at the thin trajectory line. “I want to see this port.”

“Then we go see this port. So sayeth the paid customer.” Rocket punched a couple of controls, dropping a set of scanbots into the debris field just outside the ship to keep the dataflow stable. Watching the tiny drones flit off into the silence of space reminded Coulson of Fitz's Seven Dwarves and he felt freshly out of place. “Do me a solid and go tell Groot we're moving on. He likes ya, the big dumb plant. It'll go over well.”

 . . .

Coulson spent the short journey watching Groot play with the deck of old-fashioned cards he kept in his jacket pocket, the flutter of the plastic lamination endlessly fascinating to the tree-creature. “Never know when you can use these,” he'd explained, crinkling the wrap as the curious black eyes watched him. “Good for door-cracking, lifting things carefully when you're not supposed to, and killing time in the airport. Spaceport. Well, pretty much the same thing, huh? Bet you guys get a lot of downtime in places like that.”

Phil showed him how to intercut the cards; shuffling them between his own hands in a noisy and rapidly flickering arc as Groot's branches jerked back in a child's surprise. He had a hard time playing with the cards himself, the slick surfaces finding nothing to catch on against the hard bark tips of his fingers. But Coulson watched in surprise when a thin vine grew out of the being's wrist to gently grasp and spin a four of clubs in midair. In that way, he could select and then fan a few of the little cards, making them dance above his outstretched leafy hand.

“I am  _ groooooot _ ,” burbled Groot, delighted with the way the fan's 'blades' slid against each other without resistance. He nodded approvingly, his wrist now sprouting a tiny, many-petaled flower that bloomed brightly against the deep umber of his layered bark. The other hand reached out and gently patted Coulson on the shoulder. The action left a trace of moss behind in the shape of Groot's fingers, flecking a dark and lively green against the deep navy. Coulson decided he didn't mind. “I _ am _ Groot,” Groot emphasized before folding the cards back into a fastidiously neat pile.

“What are you?” Coulson asked, touched by the friendly acceptance. He was fully aware what sort of answer he was going to get.

The bark face leaned in and blinked at him knowingly. “I am Groot,” explained Groot. It seemed like the most natural response in the galaxy.

“Yeah. I guess you are.”


	6. Bad Blood

Volstagg and Fandral shared a look as Thor continued to pace, his heavy steps causing ripples through the huge tankards of beer set before his Warriors. “He will not rescind. In this, it's the only weapon he has left to hand. He will not rescind and my friend is out there, chasing after Loki's ghosts and Loki's lies.” Thor bit off the words, his hands clenching and fretting at nothing.

Lady Sif spoke up from her side of the hall's long tables, glancing after the servants as they swept back out of the room. She stayed cautious, carrying an apology in her words. “I have met Lord Coulson since your last, Thor, as I explained. Your opinion of him and his own actions served only to reforge, greater and stronger, my opinion. I think you do not need to worry at him quite so much. He is fine and capable.”

“I forgive you entirely for not telling me of that meet. I understand; much as I understand my friend's desire to remain unseen. But you did not see my brother this day, Sif.” Thor paused in his circular route, dropping a hand onto Volstagg's shoulder. It made the warrior burp into his beard and he shook off his friend's hand, looking around the table for a hunk of hard bread to sop stew with.

She tried to make light of the situation, her tone airy in a gentle jest. “Should think I'd rather not...” Her voice trailed off at his hot glance, her words meant to pull a smile that was not going to come.

“I have not seen this in him before, an act so close to honesty it burnt to watch.”

“But an act nonetheless,” muttered Volstagg. He shook his head, tearing free more bread. “Thor, I love you as if you were my own kin and blood. I agree with Sif.” She nodded at him. “My reasons are different, however, shield-sister.” He coughed another masked burp. “If your son of Coul is wise and you both say he is and I trust to both your judges, then the lies will be exposed. Loki will remain guilty before the All-Father and then he will be slain. And that is how it should be. His story will end at last; his head parted from his neck and his tongue fed to serpents to call him home. Thor, let it go.”

“Volstagg,” said Thor, and there was a warning in his voice.

Volstagg paused before forging onward. “You do not worry just for the good ally. You worry for your brother. Still. And ever. You've given him enough chance and he's squandered each to each.” He hoisted his beer and took a hard chug for emphasis.

“As I love thee too-”

“How many more before he finally kills us all? Fortunate enough he took his madness out on some minor and unknown world. It might have been us.” Volstagg thunked the tankard back down in abrupt and open anger, not looking up into the golden fire he knew was Thor's face. “How many more chances? He cannot change. He has always refused. And now his crimes have caught him out at last and cling tight to his soul.” He looked up, taking the heat without flinching. “ _Let them drown him._ You hold none of his weight. Let him go. Do not rescue him from his own trap, this one time of all time.”

“I _cannot_ simply let him go.”

“I know, Thor.” Volstagg sighed. “As the Gods love you, so do I. I know.” He gripped the end of his gingery brown beard and mopped at his mouth. “As Loki cannot change, so too can you not in some ways.”

The heat faded from Thor's face and he spread his hands to his friends. “But what if he could change? What if by some miracle he _did?”_

“What if I farted hops and barley and golden grains, would I be then a brewery?” Volstagg snorted.

Fandral stared across the table at Sif, shaking his head almost imperceptibly at her disgusted expression. “You might, if not at least pass for a keg. Regardless, I concede that fallen Loki has been in the long dark for some time, unknown and unseen. Heimdall has little to say. Little to offer the court. It could be he has changed in some way. Or another still darker way. Thor, we cannot know what lies in his heart. Except, as ever, lies we cannot riddle out.”

“And when he returns he speaks of Coulson in the voice of a _friend_ although he is as ever incapable of the word itself.” Thor pushed the back of his hand across his face, ignoring Volstagg until his anger faded. He watched Fandral now instead, but the slender warrior had little else to add.

“He spoke of you once as a brother, full and kindly,” threw out Volstagg. “It's not like this isn't his terrain, his field of permanent battle.”

“Enough from you, Volstagg.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered the giant warrior to himself. “I speak too much of what doesn't want to be heard.” He sighed and returned his attention to the stew, knowing when to stop pushing against Thor's armor of both mind and body.

“Volstagg is harsh this day, but he should at least have his voice,” said Sif, ever diplomatic.

“And I have heard his voice and now the dire ballad he sings repeats. I am not naïve,” said Thor. He crossed the hall and took a place by her side, pulling a tankard close. He didn't catch the expression that crossed her face, startled and diffident both. “I know the risk that comes with my brother's continued existence. He is ever my kinsman, however. I cannot wholly give up.”

Sif bit her lip, looking down into the smaller tankard she preferred, its thin and chilled metal shined fit to match her armor. “But you could not wholly take his earnest defense, either. That, as you explain, was Loki's point.”

Thor stared at her, helplessly. “How could I?”

“Also to his point.”

“The things he has done-”

“Which, even in your reckoning of his words... he called out and made them his own responsibility. His hands on the sealed gate, so you recite.” Her dark brows knotted together. “That much is a new thing. What does that mean, then?”

Volstagg sensed the new battle and charged in afresh. “It means he knows how to seem remorseful enough about actions he doesn't truly regret to at least get you to _think._ To pause. To justify his existence. And that's where he wins, when we try to think like _he_ does.” He ignored Sif's pointed look. “Like rats in a bag of wheat, all wriggling poison and shitting amidst once-good food. No honest warrior should think the way a mo-” His voice faltered when Thor's hard blue eyes came up to meet his. “A man like he thinks.”

“We were children once, Volstagg. He was no monster then. You dawdled him on your thick knee like any other brat of Asgard and we all laughed together in finer times.”

The appeal fell flat. Volstagg shook his head. “No, he was a masked one through the All-Father's mercy, though I suppose he was harmless enough when wee. And in what kindness did he pay back that adoption? What face is on that ancient pressed coin? I would call it a mutilated one. He works himself free once more from this and we'll be paid back for it in full.”

Too angry now to speak to his friend, Thor thought abruptly of the look on Coulson's face at that word – _monster._ A fleeting look of contemplation and disapproval. He thought little of it at the time; the human's perspectives would be different than his having actually known Jotun and other monsters besides. And yet... The memory of Coulson's face, who now took Loki's request when no one else would.

The beer turned sour in his guts when he had to admit to himself he did not know what that meant, and his only choice was to Loki's plan and request – keep steadfast in his faith to Coulson himself.

Sif turned her head to search his face and did not know what to make of what she found there, except to leave her friend's pain alone for a time. At the thunk of the tankard, she glanced across to Volstagg and did know what she saw there – distrust, worry, and the knotted brow of a man thinking hard indeed.

. . .

In the window of the drinking hall fluttered a slender and silent raven, its feathers gleaming a sharp and healthy black so fine that they could be iridescent in the light. It pecked once or twice at crumbs of crusty bread left as an offering to Odin's good eye and good health and watched Asgard's finest warriors fret and think at one another. And when its attention was sated full of the things they had to say to one another and the whispers of things they also did _not_ say, it took off again into the clear sky above the golden city.

Not until it was high above did it squawk its creaking song for no one's pleasure but itself, and then it dove to a high and private window to watch the pacing prisoner within. It kept itself hopping and quiet behind the shadow of the curtains inside, tilting and bobbing its head as the prince stayed wrapped tight within his own mind. The prince's lips moved slightly, whispering to himself. He did not see the bird, as intended, and his strange words did not repeat themselves. No magic haunted after the low voice, no spell nor illusion was being woven in privacy.

Only words with no obvious meaning.

The raven watched for a long and silent space. It watched, and the raven's thoughts, like the prince's behind his unceasing litany, were for itself alone.


	7. Ain't No Place for No Hero

As advertised, the spaceport was a hole. Enough of one that Rocket left Groot with the ship to keep an eye on it while he and Coulson disembarked to explore. Groot seemed to be a remarkably gentle tree giant, but Coulson noticed he was also something like seven feet of pure hardwood tough. Rocket referred to the casual gambit as standard insurance. Groot nodded to that with a smile, clearly used to the routine. Coulson left him the deck of cards to play with, an offering that earned him the delighted use of Groot's signature phrase.

“Yeah, some of these guys got out of prison as recently as this morning, pretty much.” Rocket swaggered protectively in one place near Coulson's side as the human kept fiddling with the chained dock-pad. Pulling the crystalline thumb-drive and claiming Asgardian official business bought him access to the spaceport's intel grid, although the giant green man in charge of the desk kept giving him and his nice navy suit a distinctly hairy set of multiple eyeballs. “Don't stare too hard. I know crap's new and all, but sometimes these peeps want an excuse to pick a fight. They'll stomp your toolbag up into your throat to do it, too.”

“Advice sincerely noted,” Coulson said absently, busy checking the dock's logs against his cobbled-together timeline. Yeah, there it was. The profile of a deep brown rust-bucket of a ship, docking just a little over two hours after being spotted at a planetary apocalypse. One passenger, disembarking and fading into the crowd until space police picked him up. He had a basic grasp of how the Nova Corp operated, although some of the portions of that knowledge that came from Rocket had a _particular_ sort of bias that he felt safe disregarding. They sounded like decent folks in general, if sometimes pulled a bit too thin lately. He was sympathetic to that. “This is not my first roadhouse rodeo.” He glanced up to peer at the milling locals, many of whom were peering back at him with speculative looks he found familiar. “Just a way more colorful one.”

Rocket bared his teeth at a massive Badoon that stared at the pair just a smidge too long, the glint of his fangs talking for him –  _ keep walking, buddy. Yeah, I'm tiny, but I'll frickin' cut you up gooood.  _ “Y'know, you'd be a lot less sticky-outy if you'd change up your duds. We got balding pink people everywhere, that part ain't showboaty. The suit's a bit much, though.”

“Mmhmm.” He let the crack on his hairline go without anything more than a blink at the datapad.

“I got a spare ravager's jacket in the hold. My boy Quill's bigger'n you, but that crap ain't made to look snazzy on anybody anywhere, anyway. So it hangs off you not so snappy, so what.”

“I think we can handle trouble if someone wants to get cute. You in particular.” Coulson snapped the pad with its docking info back onto the harbormaster's desk, noting that he'd successfully made Rocket preen at the compliment. “Thanks,” he said to Hairy Eyeballs. “I appreciate your help today, sir.”

“Yeah, great.” Eyeballs spun away from him, returning his fractured attention to multiple digi-feeds inside his booth.

Half of those feeds, it seemed to Coulson, were probably alien porn. He absorbed the squalid familiarity of that for a moment, then looked back down at Rocket. “What's the local version of an Iron Skillet?”

“Uh....” Orange shoulders lifted in a baffled shrug.

“Super-cheap space trucker food. The first place you go if you got a fierce need for whatever you guys consider a burger.”

A light flickered on in Rocket's eyes. He gestured down the dingy green corridor away from the port controls. “Oooooyeah. C'mon. I'm a bit peckish myself anyway.”

. . .

The feathered waitress stared at Coulson's tiny holo-figure of Loki at attention in his fine Asgardian armor, tapping sharp talons against her datapad while she thought. Phil almost couldn't believe that; space waitresses, sure as hell. Glancing deftly around the wide round space that was used for various kinds of port food and other more illicit deals revealed the other thing that was pretty similar to home – lots of the travelers spent dining time checking out the staff with gross and obvious stares. “The more things change,” he murmured to himself, bemused. He didn't really know what he'd expected from jaunting around space – floating sentient crystals or something neat - but deep down he felt a little disappointment that his job was so far only letting him get to see the parts that were straight up analogous to a Midwest truck stop.

“I haven't seen him. But I'm new, only been working a few days.” The waitress gave up and stepped back.

Phil kept a straight face. It wouldn't do any good to remark that she might have mentioned that previous to wrestling with his question. Fourth worker he'd questioned since entering the communal eatery, too. What the hell, he figured. Couldn't hurt to press a little more. He took a long shot. “Anyone among the long-timers working today?”

“Yeah, hold on.” She clicked the pad she used to digitally upload orders in half and wandered off towards the kitchen. She slapped a meaty blue guy upside the head with the pad when he tried to grab at her as she passed. Another staffer came up past her and hoisted up the guy at a sharp gesture from her, wrestling him out the door of the large galactic eatery.

“Fast learnin' lady.” Rocket picked at one of his fangs with a sharp claw. “She'll do alright. Probably get a better job nice 'n quick.” He paused when Coulson looked at him. “Rules of the dirty end of the spaceway. Look at what'cha want, but if you're gonna try for it, either have a damn good reason or have a good getaway plan.”

“If I told you how familiar this part of the trip was, you wouldn't believe me.”

Rocket shrugged. “Scumbaggery is a universal language, like.” He grinned wide and fangy along his muzzle at Coulson's raised eyebrow. “I can being meaningful and astute when I wanna. How's that for a pricey word –  _ astute.”  _ A quiet bray of laughter that faded as another woman – hot pink with corn yellow hair – approached the table. “Oh, here's the one you want. I seen her before. She's been working here for probably as long as the spaceport's been around.”

“M'delina says you checking for someone's trail?” She bent over the table with both palms flat on it, looking Coulson over carefully.

Rocket slid a tiny sliver of metal and plastic across the table at a glance from Coulson. It disappeared under her curling hand and the studious look was replaced by a pleasant and easy smile. “My name's Odrade. I'll be happy to help you gents.”

Coulson flashed the digital figurine again, watching her expression carefully. Rocket had explained the pink people were Krylorians; pretty close to humans already, although more familiar to the Xandar peoples. A few were less hot-pink than this woman. And some were a bit more different than that, based on the elegant sweep of ridges on her face. He absorbed all that easily enough, and the look of recognition on her face was clear. “Oh  _ yeah,  _ him. Very clean man. You don't get them that clean around here.” She straightened up, considering. “Ridiculously polite to the staff, too. Well dressed, although he wasn't so armored up like your figgy there. Kept to himself.”

“He came in here for something a few days ago?”

Odrade looked at him like he'd snorted a hot dog through his nose. “Few days? Darling, that guy was regular.”

“ _ What _ ?” The word fell out of Coulson in genuine surprise. Rocket looked at him, his muzzle crinkled in amusement. Okay, he wasn't going to play off  _ that  _ reaction like it hadn't happened. Might as well own it. He blinked and sat back on his bench. “For how long?”

“Off and on a couple months. But always a regular cycle. He'd come in, same port and everything, and come down here. Didn't chat much. Always stayed alone. He'd get the expensive synthehol, which is to be honest, sweetie, still pretty cheap.”

Coulson pulled out both Rocket's borrowed datapad and his Asgardian crystal, scrolling further back through the huge backlog of records he'd retrieved from the harbormaster and calculating based on what she'd just said. Sure enough, now that he knew where to look – multiple port entries for the same ship. His eyebrows crawled up to his hairline. “You said he was always alone. No exceptions?”

“Nobody that I ever saw. I'm on a pretty regular schedule, so I saw him on most his trips here. Never met with anyone. Tight lipped guy. Kinda pretty if you like them pasty and underfed – and I don't - but he had a serious  _ let me be  _ attitude. Not really mean, you know. Morose. The weight of a black hole on his shoulders type. Probably a musician, I thought.” She looked distant. “I knew one of those. Great voice boxes. Depressing songs.”

Phil looked away, filing that detail. “He ever say anything to you?”

“Besides asking for a refill? I asked him once why he came in so much.” She knew a moment for a dramatic pause when she saw one and let it ride until Coulson leaned forward to nudge her on. “He said he needed to wait while the ship he was using got its charge-up back to full.”

Rocked arched the white ridge above his eye at that, flickering the whiskers that replaced a brow.

Odrade noticed the look and continued. “Oh, yeah. He mentioned that he was usually only fixing up a couple hours worth of charge.  _ Always _ kept a fully charged and stocked ship. Part of his routine.”

Coulson nodded her on. “The regular cycle, what was that?”

She uncurled her hand to look at the credit transfer and her eyebrow said it was still good. “Quick trips here, like a little local round trip cycle. Then he'd be gone a week or so. Six days exactly, if I'm going to be straight. Then he'd come back, make his round trip, gone again. Did this a couple months, like I say.”

He poker-faced his way past his excitement at the clue. “The Corp ever ask you about this when they came through?”

She gave him a disbelieving huff. “Are you kidding? I heard they were just happy he didn't pitch a fit when they rolled in. They grabbed him down in the dock, I was told, and they came loaded for a Kree army. What was he, Asgardian or something? Anyway, they never asked anyone anything. Said it was some other world's internal matter.” She shrugged, pocketing her bribe to mark the end of the transaction. “Anything else?”

“You were a terrific help,” said Coulson, nodding his head politely. “Thank you very much, Miss.”

“Aww. I'll have M'delina getcha a top-up before you gents get outta this pile.” She leaned in confidentially. “And trust me, you wanna get out. You're almost as clean as that guy was, and not as scary with the attitude. Someone'll drop you for ship parts.”

. . .

“Bet you was a charmer when you was young,” smirked Rocket when Odrade sauntered off.

Coulson arched an eyebrow at the hairball. “You think I stopped being one? I'm offended.”

Rocket flicked the claw he'd been using to scratch at the tabletop. Some speck of dirt sailed off it and he grimaced before continuing. “Like  _ I'm _ any judge. I'm used to sleaze. 'Kay, so your guy was spending a lot of time on or around Planet Ex before the blow-up, if you're hearing what I'm hearing. Always rolled alone. Either setting up for the explosion if we're following the official charge, or some other reason we don't know 'bout.”

He nodded while looking at his datapad again. “It fits. Two hour trip cycles while he was in the local region, then he'd dart off somewhere else with a full engine. Rinse and repeat.” He looked up at Rocket, finding no harm in tossing out the question. “You think it's worth searching the port he was using?”

“ _ You're  _ the space cop, humie, not me.”

“And you're the bounty hunter on a babysitting job.”

Rocket reared back, mock-aghast. “I'm not a – flerken butts, wouldja listen to this  _ slander?  _ Bounty hunter, my entire ass.” He crossed his furry arms in front of his vest, ignoring the glances his tiny, hammy tantrum drew from other tables. “That is  _ ignorant  _ and  _ ignominious _ . I want an apology.” He eyed Coulson, expectant.

“I apologize, Rocket. You're clearly an  _ excellent _ bounty hunter. And demolitionist.” He played along with a deep nod of his head.

_ “NOW  _ the humie gets it.” Rocket unfolded his arms, mollified.

Coulson let his face tweak. “Ignominious?”

“I saw it on a vidfeed and looked it up. Neat word. I like it. I mean, it can't hurt to check the port out, but if I were being cagey? Naw. I wouldn't leave anything there. Corp might at least toss the place and find whatever.” He gave an offhanded shrug. “And if he got set up? Ain't gonna be evidence of that sitting around left behind.”

“It's really not looking like a setup.” He sighed, considering the angles. Unless he got derailed in another direction, all he could really do was keep backtracking Loki and see what shook loose. “What if you were going to leave some sort of trail deliberately?”

Rocket grinned up into his face. “You already figured that one, humie, you just using me to bounce.”

Coulson nodded. He was right. “You'd tell a waitress you've seen on the regular what you're doing for travel plans.”

“You'd be an okay bounty hunter yourself. What's the other half there you're chewing?”

He dropped his elbows on the synthetic tabletop to regard Rocket closely. “Where can you get to from here that you'd need a fully charged engine on a ship like his for?”

“See, now  _ that  _ is a known variable. I can math that in my head and all it does is tell me the obvious.” Rocket lifted a single finger to emphasize. “Like I say, I know where the high rollers go, especially when they want to ride low.”

“Don't leave me hanging, Rocket.”

“They go nowhere.”

Coulson leaned back hard, thinking he misheard and worried what would happen if the translator chip behind his ear conked out. “Where?”

“ _ Know _ here,” came the repeat, and this time he heard the emphasis. “Damn right your guy paid out a shipload of money to have someone watch your back. You think  _ this  _ place looks rough.” Rocket gave a grumpy giggle. “Humie, we're gonna go check out something to blow your mind. Well, it blew  _ somebody's  _ mind, I tell you that!” 

Now he outright laughed at his own bizarre joke. “You'll be glad you ain't going alone. And, might I add, it's a real good thing they don't track manifests too close. They don't care.” He leaned across the table and beckoned Coulson to listen close. “Cuz the last time I was there, it didn't go so great.” He tipped a wink and leaned back to stretch. “Fuel up, space cop. This trip's a bit longer, even with the engine  _ I _ got. Take a day or so.”


	8. Your Call Cannot be Completed as Dialed

“Hey. Quick question for ya.” Rocket kept pace with Coulson, who was still studying the docking information on their way back to Groot and the hot rod yellow ship.

“Shoot.”

“Phrasing, baby.” Rocket snorted laughter through his fangy teeth. “Why you carrying this Loki guy's water for him, anyway? Like,  _ I _ got an excuse. My ethics are for sale to any solid bidder, so long as the credits clear.”

Coulson glanced over the black edge of his datapad and down at the top of Rocket's furry head. For an absurd second he wondered if the fur was soft. The image of giving Rocket an ear-scritchie like a cat passed through and then got buried. Trying that wouldn't go over well, he figured. Kind of insulting. He returned his attention to his notes. “Because mine aren't.”

Rocket chewed that over, muttering under his breath. “What happens if ya find out he did exactly what everyone thinks?”

“I go back to Asgard, I tell them what I've found.” He couldn't help but pause before saying the rest. “And then they'll execute him.”

“They go hard on Asgard. Way I hear it, more'n a few out there looking for an excuse to see that guy gone permanent. Has  _ he _ got a rep. This has gotta be like a holiday for them.” Rocket kept grumbling. “You won't try to bust him out before they get the big knife out of the drawer?”

“That's two questions.”

“And I'll give up a two credit refund on the job if you can tell me you wasn't just now trying to avoid it.”

“A  _ whole  _ two credits _ .”  _ Phil chuckled, scrolling the datapad now that he had a narrow line on the movements of Loki's stolen ship. He didn't understand some of the readings that had been archived from within the port hangar, but there was a section with a lot of repetitive information.

“Also I'd back out anyway and cheat ya. Smart humie. Gimme the pad, whatcha gnawing at?” Rocket slapped up at Coulson's hands until he dug the flexible pad free from the tight grip.

“Hey!”

“Oh yeah.” Deft claws scrolled back and forth, checking the data block and exploding it out for closer study. “Man, he was really burning up the signal lines through the port channels. Look at this. Wave-sign, fatline, transpo. He was singing tunes to the galaxy entire.”

“Is  _ that  _ what all that is? Phone records.” Coulson craned his head down to look over Rocket's shoulder, impressed. Now that he knew what he was looking at, the patterns started clicking into familiar places.

“Yeah, check this, follow me. Your boy sent a crapload of messages to a bunch of different worlds each time while he was local. You see that tag there?” He indicated a red mark next to the logs. “Most of 'em bounce. Nobody wanted to pick them up. Other calls, the ones that do get picked up into an active convo, are short. Seconds. This one on Hala lasts a whole twenty of 'em. Well, that's the Kree homeworld anyway, they probably spent eighteen of them insulting his haircut and then the other two telling him where to go screw.” He tossed the pad back up to Phil, his interest lost.

_ “HEY.”  _ The guttural, almost hungry roar came from several meters behind them. Phil went on instant alert without a trace of panic, looking ahead for a shortcut to the dock or some tactical cover. He'd left his sidearm on Earth, figuring that not only was the weapon going to be outclassed off-world, but that he wasn't exactly going to find a Gander Mountain to stock up at in a pinch, either. So long as it wasn't a planet of Hulks he was facing, he could probably do better with his ever reliable hands and instincts.

“Don't worry about it, keep walking. Chuckleheads.” Rocket was fussing with something in one of his myriad tiny pockets, not really paying attention.

_ “HEY. I WANT YOUR STUFF.”  _ Footsteps started chunking up towards them, rapidly. Coulson turned around, still walking and still clinically planning his move. The guy was  _ huge _ , lizard-like and thickly-armed, the fingers ending in cheap gold-tinted claw caps.

Rocket was still scrounging without looking up. “He's the Badoon that kept checking us out earlier. I told you to not worry about it.”

The alien mugger kept roaring as he sped up.  _ “YOU GOT A NICE SHIP. I NEED IT. GIVE IT UP AND I WON'T KILL YOU TOO BADLY.” _

Phil stopped walking, ready to defend himself. Muscular system looked standardish, broad through the torso but still identifiably humanoid. He couldn't be sure that a hard flying kick to the thorax would drop a 'Badoon', but it'd probably at least slow the alien down while he came up with something better.

“Fer cryin' out loud,  _ this _ is what I'm getting paid for.” Rocket whirled, something clenched firmly in both his tiny hands. Two sizzling electrical pops lit up the end of the makeshift device and the Badoon promptly dropped to the deck with a whimper. Green hands grabbed both his thighs, squeezing with all his enormous might as the muscles in them visibly jumped and quivered. “Go nab a cart, ya mook. C'mon, let's go. Don't give me that look, I just stunned him for your bleedin' heart. I  _ told  _ ya, that costs extra.”

 . . .

“I  _ am _ Groot,” said Groot, idly spinning a little in his co-pilot's seat. The ship's controls were designed for two different sets of hands – one tiny and swift, the other bulky and ponderous. He could rev up the engines with ease when Rocket needed him to and he nodded in greeting as his partner dropped into the main seat and started fussing around with launch prep. “iamG _ rooot _ .”

Coulson settled into the passenger seat behind Groot. “Those guys weren't any trouble?” he asked. The outside entryway to the hangar had been stacked neatly with four conked-out humanoids, which didn't draw so much as a glance from Rocket when they arrived. One looked like he'd been slapped upside the face until raw with a bundle of branches, telling Phil immediately what had gone down while they ate terrible space diner food.

“You kiddin'?” Rocket reached out and patted Groot's arm companionably. “This big lunk, he's gentle, but he don't fool around when trouble happens. He's as solid as, well... a frickin' tree I guess. I coulda come up with better.” He pushed the engines into manual control and they pulled away smoothly from the dock.

“ _I_ AM GROOT,” said Groot proudly. He reached onto the panel and plucked up the pack of cards, handing them gently back towards Coulson with a nod before looking back at Rocket with an expectant expression.

“Give you a credit if you can guess where we're going next, Groot.” Rocket tapped at his own head, which was apparently some sort of clue. Coulson still didn't get it.

The tree-being sat back, seeming to think that over carefully. “ _ iammmG _ root _ ?” _

“Good catch.” Rocket grinned through his muzzle as Groot's shoulder vines wilted into a duller grey-brown for just a second in what seemed to be worry. “It'll go alright this time. Probably. Hey?” He spun in the seat to regard Phil. “Gonna ask you a quick promise before we engage the auto.”

He lifted an eyebrow, waiting for it.

“Don't call out and beg someone to come meet us at Knowhere just so they can kick your ass. I know that sounds super-obvious, cuz you seem like a reasonable kinda humie. But believe me, I got a reason to ask.” He sounded long-suffering.

“ _Kind_ of not my thing.”

“I'm gonna hold you to it, pinkie.”

“Okay. I'm not going to do that, I promise. What happened?”

“Oh, ya know. This walking meat sandwich of my general acquaintance just kinda summoned an army right on top of our heads because that's the way this guy thinks up good ideas. Blew the whole day right outta the stars.” Rocket sighed. “It makes ya jumpy.”

. . .

“The credits go through?”

The Ravager shrugged through his ill-fitting dull red coat, his view of his boss blocked partially by a holographic view of their ship atop the nav table. “Took the buyer like three tries to get the routing right. Frickin' amateurs. Yeah, we got paid. Paid nice, too. I don't think he cared about the exchange rate too much. And the other thing came through with the money, too.” He tossed his flight leader the burner pad. “Trackcode for the implant. It's gonna drop in and out a bit, they're not using the standard galactic protocol. Always gotta fly independent over there. Won't be hard, though, it's surface level. Not a deep plant. We gonna call over, let the big guys know we got an odd job?”

“What, Yondu? Screw Yondu, you know he's going soft in his old age. So he can still whistle a bit, so what.” The scraggly boss waggled the pad for emphasis, secure in the bravado that came with knowing the man he ragged on was countless light-years away and couldn't hear him. “He doesn't scare me. You know he'd want a cut anyway. That's less for our end.”

That put a gleam in the second man's eye and he twisted his mouth into a hungry grin. “Guess this is where I toss in the rest of the good news - tracker's already in motion.”

“You graph the probable trajectory?” It wasn't really a question. If it wasn't already done, it was an order.

“Oh, yeah, boss.  _ Perfect  _ choice, too. Nobody's gonna care if we grab a terran off one of the mains there.” He reached out and tapped the pad, showing him the target location – that eerie floating head in the dead drifts of deep space.

“Beautiful. Call forward, get the engines hot. I want to catch up to these guys, get right up behind 'em so we're not screwing around with the crowds too much. You know who he's riding with?”

“Couple of Quill's friends, if you can believe that.” He popped up the overview on the nav to show the IDs.

The ship boss started laughing. “The stuffed toy and the twigbag? We overcharged.”

“Should have dug for more. Right, boss?”

The boss reached out and clapped his buddy on the shoulder. “And then some. Let's go make our client happy, kids.”


	9. The Flickering Candle

There was no one else in the hallway outside the closed door at this hour of night; no guard, no servant, no one to observe her approach. Candlelight still flickered long shadows through the gap underneath and Sif watched as some of those shadows stopped moving as she drew closer. He knew she was there, or at least knew that someone was. Still not yet certain what she intended to see nor what she wanted to hear from the prisoner, she reached out a hand to push the heavy wooden door open.

_You did not see my brother this day, Sif._

_Should think I'd rather not,_ fell the flat jest in her recent memory and when the door finished swinging, she saw Loki waiting at the far side of the room. He was looking at her with a curiously mild expression, long black hair tied messily back. He looked a little younger that way, not as much the half-wild and fallen prince that once tormented two different worlds. It caught her off guard and she faltered. "Not an expected guest," he murmured. There was no tone in it to help identify his mood _._

She swallowed, certain he'd notice her hesitation and use it if she let the moment linger too long. She stepped in and let the door close behind her. "I assume you do not deny a visitor."

"Well, I've hardly the right at present." He gestured to a fine chair not far from where she stood. "But if being welcomed properly gives any comfort, then consider yourself welcomed."

She remained standing, her hands clasped in front of her armor. "Thank you," she managed to say in a prim voice.

Loki lifted an eyebrow at that, then turned to pour a single goblet of wine from the decanter left for him at supper. "Consider this on offer as well, although I'm assuming you won't trust a drink from inside this room." He sighed and sat in the window-seat, regarding her. "You're my only visitor today, and so late. Couldn't rest?"

What had she wanted to ask? She looked away, knowing all once-clever plans turned to dust before the prince's green stare. Such was his domain and seldom hers. "Thor frets," she managed to scrounge up, thinking of the argument in the drinking hall. That was the core, she knew. Why did it still disturb her?

"It's one of his rather defining features, Sif. He frets at everything of late. Weight of nine worlds on his shoulders, you might say. Does he give a reason for his fretting, or is it a generic sort of all-purpose fretting?"

"This. The world. The son of Coul-"

_"Coulson."_ He rolled his eyes, not unkindly. He flapped a hand, the flippant act intended to mock himself for the sharpness in his voice. She could read a kind of apology in that. "Only a few humans take their names from their fathers as we do, and he is not one of them. They sometimes regard it archaic." Something else entered his words and she could not be certain of it. It might have been concern. He confused her – he always did, but so much now seemed vague and unmapped. "Was there some word of trouble?"

Sif shook her head, pushing away fleeting and uncertain worries to the back of her mind. "He fears only that the human will come to some danger out there."

"I rather hope not; they'll think to put _that_ on my tab somehow as well, and I can ill afford much else. I gave him the best escort I could muster to duty, on my thin reputation and fatter wallet. To the rest he has his own fair sensibilities. He's regrettably kindly, but formidable enough." The words were dry. She tried to study him as Odin might, or Heimdall, but to her he was forever impenetrable.

He continued to monologue, sardonic and drawling, while she tried to pry at him. "So Thor frets and you come to tell me about it in the dead of night. What word do you want to bring to him like a well-wrapped gift to ease his worries? What kindly offering? I have no magic ones today, no one here much seems to care for those." He looked away, sipping at his wine and slinging one simply-clad black leg over another.

"Would they be true ones?"

Loki glanced back at her, eyes half lidded and weary. "Let's just save each other some time right here and recognize that, barring some sort of grand universal miracle, you will likely never take anything I say at face value without some other external cause. It's a motif in my life that I'm getting a little tired of – please excuse my tone, I'm having a tense week – and you damned well are fully aware of it. As am I. None of you ever gave me the full cost of trust and let's not play at looking for it now."

"We have reasons-"

"Of _course_ you do. And Sif, I have never held any reason to trust you. You are Thor's friends. Not mine." There was no rancor in it, just that steady tiredness.

"You fought with us, trained with us-"

"I was there, physically, as general background flavor. Permitted along under the banner of the elder friend you _did_ respect. The backup Prince, grudgingly accepted out of necessity. Let's not bandy now and pretend I was well-loved among your warrior kin. I was always the other, even before it came to be known that I was _other_." He rubbed a hand across his face. "Was it mentioned it's the dead of night? Must we hash over unhappy childhoods _now?_ "

"Thor believes-"

"What did you believe?" He cocked his head at her as she realized she'd lost complete control over the conversation. If she ever held any. That much was familiar. "Enough of him, Sif. When we speak, those few words we've ever passed, it's always Thor, Thor, _Thor._ If you mooned over him any more brightly, we'd have some brand new tidal issues across Asgard. Well, it'd keep the engineers busy. Tell me what troubles _you._ "

She stared at him, speechless at first. Then in desperation - "Was anything ever true?"

"Oh, Gods," he muttered, his voice dead. "I'll tell you yes and do with it what you want. What is this satisfaction you're seeking? You can't find it here, I've done enough to all but ensure that and your own fear will do the rest."

She tried again anyway. "When you played at being a king..."

"Which time?" he shot back, quick enough to fluster her. That made her angry and in the grit and gravel of the emotion she found a sturdy place to snap back from.

"This last!" He lifted an eyebrow and waited for her to continue. "You gave orders, and they were not all foolish and unkind. You did not play me cruelly, nor many of the commoners."

"I did not think it necessary, nor noble. I spent much of my cruelty taking the damned throne and chose to spare the rest my blade unless otherwise forced. Yes, even the charge I sent you to Earth to recover."

"Lorelei." Sif swallowed. "Did you have a plan for that?"

"I might've once. They put her in the cell I once lived in. I think that's funny." He looked away, seeming to think. "She's still there, or at least should be. I didn't set her free for some hidden amusement. Doesn't matter any longer, she's someone else's problem. Is that what you came to ask after?"

"I... no."

He stared at her while she tried to find what it was she wanted. Eventually he filled the muddled silence with a gambit that surprised her. "I liked you rather the best of Thor's friends. You never trusted me either, but you were not unkind about it. Perhaps on some level, in some fractional way, you understood."

"Understood _what_?"

"What it's like to live as the shadow of an all-consuming flame." He leaned back, impassive, as her face grew hot and angry. "You think I'm trying to insult you. Not unexpected. Also, not my intent. You know. For once." He sipped his wine, eyes narrowing in some private thought. "You are one of Asgard's finest warriors."

That made her at last take the chair he'd first indicated. Her face showed her puzzlement outright, wondering where the inevitable attack was going to come from.

"You did it yourself, forced those obstinate trainers to take a woman under their wing, forced your way through the ranks of other and bigger and lesser warriors, and claimed the favored son of the All-Father as your most faithful ally. You owe no one anything, for you earned yourself entire." His voice became low and rueful. "And all this is known for true throughout Asgard because Thor tells the tale for you. It is known, because the Prince speaks for his shield-sister. How many would listen to your voice alone?"

Sif felt the blood drain from her face.

"It cannot be helped. It is Asgard's way, and he means his defense of you kindly and with utmost respect... if not in the tone of love we both know you crave. But nonetheless, do you ever lay at rest and wonder if his flame diminishes yours, that it might one day leave you with the cold shadows instead? He is a great supergiant star, and all us debris must bow to his luminosity. It is what he was born to be. Does it ever touch you with resentment that even what you could be, what you are, is so faded under the unceasing glare of his light?"

"You dare," she tried to spit. It came out toneless.

He looked evenly at her, and later she would realize that there was no insulting pity in his regard. "If there has ever been a moment of that in your secret hours, then you have a single glimpse of what, _I_ think, you might have tried to see in this room. And I am throwing it at you openly, harshly, to warn you away from contemplating those shadows overmuch. Remember that the well-meant light of that star is at least intended to be warm and to grant comfort to travelers. For should you falter against the shadow, that's how you get _here_. To this room. In the dead of night. Wondering if there will be another." He politely lifted his goblet to her, marking the end of his volley. "I thank you for the company, although I doubt my part will be remembered as enjoyably."

She jerked herself out of the seat and fled the room without managing a proper farewell, realizing that she had not wrested from him any single clue or bitter victory she'd thought to come for. Instead he gave that clue freely, no doubt knowing her temptation to run from it.

He'd told her the absolute truth.

. . .

"Sif?"

Thor's voice tore her from her thoughts as she stood with her arms folded against herself, looking at the starlight gardens of the castle. The sound of his long cape rustling against his armor came up behind her and she couldn't help but smile at how comforting that simple little noise could be. "Of an evening, Thor."

"Are you well?"

She glanced up into his creased, worried face and shrugged. "I am well. No need for rest this night."

"Yet you look weary."

She knew she had no art for lie, so she used the truth to hide instead. "Our small row the other day sat ill with me. I've been unsettled since."

He nodded, his face open and understanding. "All will ever be well, Sif. Only a temporary disagreement, as all friends must face now and again." He chuckled. "Fandral forgets anything was ever amiss and Volstagg and I have already made amends over too many tankards and a fine roast. Only you were missed this night."

She smiled again, this time for his notice. "I thought to wander and sort my thoughts, that's all." She turned back to the garden, regarding the fine white flowers growing nearby in a bordered patch. Some slender, elegant species of lily, similar to certain of Midgard's. It struck her that it was the type the humans sometimes used for funerals and she looked away from them to find kinder contemplation. "It seemed a greater disagreement than some we've had of late," she said, though she immediately decided to not rebuild and refresh all of their arguments once more.

"Well, 'tis true. But Volstagg has kept his space and rebuilt his thoughts, like yourself, and now we all draw together again. By morrow we will have only our fast friendships."

"So soon?" She smiled. "No grudges for even a day or three?"

"I expect he found a vision when he went out into the city earlier, alone to be about his business." Thor leaned against a tall pillar and grinned. "A vision of venison and wheels of cheese, no doubt, but it bettered his mood when he returned. And he comes to me to say 'All will be well for us and Asgard, my good friend, for we are honorable warriors and determined friends.' And he clasps me on the shoulder as he did when I was smaller than he. Drunk, but amiable once more." His smile faltered when Sif looked sharply at him. "What?"

"He's seldom so maudlin as that," she said, stilling herself and chasing away those fleeting concerns. It meant nothing, those looks of deep worry and heartfelt distrust of Asgard's prisoner. Volstagg had no great harm in him. Justice would prevail. It was Asgard's way. She smiled, bringing a mirror of one to Thor's face.

"He was also a keg deep and stank like the stable he napped in." Thor waved it away. "Come, let's go have a drink ourselves and then rest. Tomorrow will be another fine day."

Her smile faltered, but not enough for him to notice. _For us. But not, perhaps, for Loki. Loki, who uses a kind of truth to protect himself now instead of lies. What does any of this mean?_

The unsettled feeling returned. She covered it with a slight bow, and went with Thor to ease her frets in mead.


	10. Han Shot First

It was the first time Coulson ever saw a nebula in such close detail, in such haunting massiveness, in such a vivid swath of deep-space oceanic colors that bled into the edge of what the human eye could absorb and identify. It went on for light-years, trailing thin veils of translucent organic material against the black. Beyond the haze were still-visible stars, twinkling in defiance against the impossibility of that anomaly in space.

There was a ghastly severed head, impossibly huge and demanding at least some awe from any first visitor, nestled within these galactic wisps. That was about the end of what Phil could take without desperately wanting a stiff drink and a few hours to re-assess his place in the universe. It must have showed in his slack-jawed, startled expression. Rocket rustled under the panel of the ship and came up with a flask of something, shoving it wordlessly at the human. He took a tiny, cautious sip and tasted little, but it felt like his head got knocked sideways for a second. It also calmed his newly unsettled nerves. He coughed hard and handed the flask back, feeling his way back to a mental balance. “Thanks.”

“It's a stumper alright. The nebula's formed from the gases and suchlike the head gives off while it decays. They been at it in there for who knows how long, digging up what they can out of the rot and selling it off. Rough neighborhood, but if you need it, you can get it here. If you can find it, that is – ain't nothing found here don't want to be found.” He hummed a little as he deftly piloted the ship towards the head. “And if you got the flash, you're as safe as anything. 'Till the money runs out, anyway.” Rocket checked local starway traffic with a plinking nail against his nav screen and picked a lane of approach through a frantic knot of merchanter ships. They twinkled individually tiny against the sprawling backdrop of dead flesh, pixels of metal against an eternity of bone.

“What's the head?”

“Some kinda dead God, if you go for that sort of thing. I mean, it's so frickin' huge, 'God' works just about as well as anything else. There's a bunch of thinkers somewhere in there, pretty much a cult, right? They say, based on the way the throat's ripped up and some other scientific crap, that it got murdered and that's why it's out here like this. Now chew on  _ that  _ in the dark while tryin'a sleep.” Rocket rumbled a dour laugh. “What kills a God that was bigger'n most planets?”

Coulson chewed that over for a moment, considering the scale of what Rocket described. “Gimme the flask back, please.”

“Go easy there, pinkie. I also use that stuff to polish the contacts on the drive coils. Takes like six months to brew.” Rocket watched him take a second sip, equally as small as the first. The human turned a deeper pink than usual. It made for a neat effect. “Yep. Okay, still with me here?”

“Mhm.” Coulson nodded, tugging his tie just a smidge looser than usual under his throat to find the recycled but mostly clean air again.

“Thinkin' straight?”

“Always.”

“'Kay. We'll be dockin' here momentarily. Think over your notes, humie. Cuz if you don't have a clue what you're looking for here or where to start... we're gonna have a rough time.”

Coulson sat back in his chair, the fleeting buzz of Rocket's homebrew making way for harder contemplation. No, he had to admit to himself. On this leg of the trip, he didn't have a clue. He'd expected – he didn't know what, really – something like the last spaceport, or maybe some big and strange yet familiar land like Asgard. The head was a world entire, full of people that weren't going to just drop information for him like candy. The truck stop motif was gone. And somewhere in this vast stretch of weirdness, tiny and lost, were Loki's old trails.

He studied the approaching dead God's skull with numb awe and found himself looking in its filmy, pockmarked eye. It gave him no answers. It was frozen in unfathomable questions of its own.

_ Murdered.  _ Unwillingly, his gaze took the long drift towards the floating vertebrae and the drifting trails of torn flesh along them, each one some impossible river of skin following the currents of space at the slowest pace imaginable. Yeah. He could buy that theory.

. . .

He played like he knew what he was doing from the first steps onto the plated gangways across vats of unknown liquid, but he knew instantly he was now beyond the limits of his earthly experiences. There weren't harbormasters here, no central grid of information. There were flimsy, half-built buildings wrangling illicit transmissions every few hundred meters or so, but without an in to get to their intel grids – much less a good reason to give their tenders, who didn't give two rips about distant Asgard – they were useless to him. It would take time to find his feet, adapt to the rules of this road. Time that he might not have.

If Rocket could tell he was at a loss, he didn't bother to push on it. Groot ambled alongside, his black eyes watching the unending press of people from every corner of the galaxy with quiet and intense interest. With the various fees paid, nobody was going to mess with their ship here at least. Credits spoke the single universal language, and Knowhere listened close.

Where would Loki have gone? There were thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of nooks, hollowed out neighborhoods where beings lived. They ranged from desperate squalor to palatial criminal mansions. Somewhere among these were the vast and private territories of someone or something named 'Tivan.' Rocket waved it off when they heard the name in passing, telling him that unless he absolutely had a need to know, knew for a fact that his trail connected there, just to let it go. The tension in his voice told more of the story. So he left it aside, at least for now.

There were almost as many places were services had set up shop to tend their more transient businesspeople – 'street' food, kiosks, bars, bars, and more bars. Coulson ducked into one hoping his instinct might press him in the right direction and turned around again. It was a bettor's bar, noisy and half-blocked off from casual visitors. Not the right call. Loki never outright gambled, not unless he fixed the odds well in advance. That recollection gave him the familiar nibble of doubt. What were the odds really fixed at here?

Rocket offered up nothing. Why would he? He was a paid babysitter, a guardian, not actually a guide. He'd already got his money and he'd been more help thus far than he had any need to be. Groot watched over them both with little to say, no whisper of his single unmistakeable line. Coulson shoved the sudden, hollow feeling of being lost and far away from home away and kept pressing, kept looking for the places a man would go when he didn't want to be found.

And in the middle of the next day in port he gave in and suggested they find something better than dive food to eat while he regrouped his thoughts. Rocket accepted that with a shrug. “All expenses paid trip, humie. Maybe something'll strike ya over some stir-fry.”

. . .

Groot watched the human wander away from the table, his voice low. “i _ am _ grooooT?” He finished his worried words with that hard noise of question, searching his partner's face for answers that clearly weren't satisfying him.

“He'll be fine. He ain't leaving sight for more'n a couple minutes.” Rocket wrestled deftly with a fork too big for his hand, beady eyes always darting around for anyone who might dare to make fun of him for the way he was. “Never see a guy give that much of a rip about his job. You figure any of this?”

“IamGroot.” Groot sighed, cupping the wide bark of his chin with a splayed branch-finger hand.

“Yes, Groot. I know you like him, and I know you feel bad that you can't help him out more. I don't know  _ why  _ you like him-”

“Iam Grooooot.”

Rocket shook his head. “Whatever, big guy. Listen, why don't ya wander around that concourse the other way real quick? See if you spot anything that can help the human. You won't, but you'll feel like you're doing something and that's almost as good.” He snorted down at his food, ignoring the pointed look Groot gave him. “Go on. Take a shuffle.” He dropped his fork and scruffed his claws across the white marks of his brow until Groot wandered off. “Okay, loser. Your turn,” he muttered under his breath, waiting for it.

The guy Rocket saw on their trail since maybe an hour after their docking waited until Groot was nearly out of sight, the tree-being pausing by a half-hearted attempt at setting up a little enclosed garden by one of the more upscale bars. Groot reached out to play with the leaves of the false plants, his expression no longer visible. The Ravager slid into the empty seat across from Rocket, hands on his knees under the table.

Rocket flickered deep brown-black eyes up to regard the scraggly little blue guy in the crappy red jacket. “Wondered when you'd come out. Thanks for not keeping me waiting too long, gets boring. You here from Yondu?” The guy blinked hard, clearly pissed and a little nonplussed that his appearance didn't impress the hairball. “Ain't Quill, he just calls. And calls. I got like fifty messages backed up. Whatcha want? C'mon, spit it.”

“I got a counter-offer on the human you're shipping around.”

“ _ Course  _ you do. Ain't nothing this big ever goes down without somebody throwing some more cash at it.” Rocket flicked a sharp nail at the guy. “Let's hear it.”

“Return on investment, plus more. Double your payout, Rocket.”

“For looking the other way when you paste my charge?” Rocket snorted derisively. “My rep costs way more than that.”

“We're not going to kill him. Just take him off the board for a little while. He can go home when the Asgardian gets executed. Everybody's happy that way. Y'know. Except for the dead guy.” The Ravager snickered at his own terrible joke.

“Aw, how ethical.” Rocket leaned back in his seat. Something sent his hackles up as he did so, the distinct sense of being stared it. Rocket ignored it, making his fur along his spine settle back down. It was just Groot, his mobile and leafy conscience. He wasn't anyone's fool; he knew what was going down. Rocket sighed for himself alone, then picked up his fork again to toy with it. “Who's your buyer?”

“Confidential.” The ravager took one hand out from under the table and rested it along the top instead. There was a small pulse gun in that hand, and the finger was lightly laying on the trigger. “Come on, Rocket. You're never allergic to more money.”

“I'm allergic to threats, though.” Rocket gestured at the weapon on the table. “So what's the play, get paid or else?”

The Ravager jutted his chin towards the hallway Coulson went down, his eyes never leaving Rocket, “I've already got my boys stuck on his tail. We're not going to lose track of him, no way no how.” His voice was obnoxiously confident. Rocket pulled his muzzle along his teeth. It wasn't a smile, but let blue boy here think it was. Blue boy's attitude and tone already told him more than he thought. “All I gotta do is hold you here and the hard part of the job's done.” He grinned.

Rocket shifted in his seat, turning just enough to see Groot. Yeah, there was the big ol' log. Staring stakes at him. He sighed again, much more dramatically this time. “All this over a deck of cards. Frickin' humans. Frickin' Knowhere.” He looked at the Ravager, rolling his eyes as if to say  _ do you believe this? _

“You gonna play nice for some easy dosh?”

Rocket leaned over as fast as a weasel and stabbed clean through the guy's gun hand with the fork. “Ahahahahaha hahaaa, no.” When the blue space pirate realized what happened and started to screech in pain, Rocket whirled himself out of his chair. “GROOT!”

“IAMGROOT!”

“GET ON COULSON. I'LL CATCH UP!”

. . .

Coulson stayed low behind cover, the plasteel chair leg he'd torn free hanging easy in his hands. He'd already brained one of the jerks in the red coats when they got too close, taking off further down the winding halls and open crossways and trying to lose himself in the milling crowd. Used to this sort of behavior, the crowd absorbed him like one of their own without complaint. He moved fast, minnowing through them and picking out next moves. A few wild caws of laughter chased him, the hallmark of entertained rubberneckers at the edges of someone else's bad day.

Still, the jerks in the coats kept catching up and now he was down some corridor where he didn't have a clue where it was going to take him. He didn't know  _ how  _ they were finding him - DNA tracking, spotters watching for a human, who knew what? But he was having hell's own time losing his attackers. At least it didn't seem like they were shooting to kill, and that told him a lot right there. Not answers, exactly, but this wasn't some random act of 'terrorize the slightly less hairy than usual alien.' Which was its own kind of contemplation – out here,  _ he  _ was the alien. Not the dozens of different types of people he'd seen in just the last five minutes alone.

He put that aside. Philosophy about his place in the galaxy had to wait. Three more guys – two in varying shades of blue and one looking almost exactly like a human back home – and they were charging up the corridor fast with faces that meant business and stunners in their hands. He braced himself, firming up his grip on the leg.

“I. AM.  **GROOT.”**

A vine bolstered with chunks of branch slithered up the corridor whipcord-fast behind his attackers, clotheslining two of them instantly. Instead of freezing, Phil took the opportunity and charged at the remaining one as  _ he _ twirled to regard seven feet of pissed-off arboreal nature incarnate. The guy's last sight would be the approaching Groot, bark face wide and full of fury, but all he felt was the chair leg conking hard into the back of his skull.

“Thanks,” said Coulson as the last jerk dropped, smart enough to not lose the makeshift weapon until he found a better one. No way this was over yet.

“I am Groot,” replied Groot, immediately mild again. He reached out and patted Coulson on the head, eyes narrowing down at him in concern.

Coulson felt for a moment like someone else's pet hamster. “I'm okay. This is kinda normal for me, really.”

“ _ GROOT! HUMIE! _ ”

“IAMGROOT.”

Rocket tore down the corridor, following Groot's voice, and he'd picked up some ridiculously-sized weapon somewhere along the way. It didn't look like it had a stun setting. “We got more incoming. A whole shipload of these turds, frankly, looking for a piece of action to get cut in on.”

_ Oh, have I got a gun back home you'd like,  _ Coulson thought, slowly chewing over to what actually happened in the last forty seconds. “They gotta be tracking me somehow,” he started.

“Yeah, I know,” finished Rocket for him. He didn't stop running till he got close to Coulson. “Sorry, man.” He spun the enormous pulse rifle around and cold cocked Phil upside the head with the butt of it. Then he leaned down when the human dropped into a limp heap, giving him a followup smack just behind his ear.


	11. Dark Matter

Skye flipped a page in the slightly old National Geographic she was reading, scanning the article about the first steps scientists were making in dark energy studies with a lifted eyebrow. “You think Phil's doing okay?” She lifted her head up to look back over the arm of the couch at Agent May, who was using the lounge's nicked-up coffee table to do some basic non-top level paperwork instead of borrowing the Director's office.

“I'm sure he's fine,” came the terse reply. The pen in her hand scratched across a set of codes, marking which ones were still controlling active sites and which one needed a checkup scout in the upcoming weeks.

“You're mad because he hasn't called in.”

“I'm not mad because he hasn't called, Skye. They don't exactly roll with Ma Bell out there, I'd be surprised if he  _ did  _ call. I'm mad because when he said we were in between storms... he didn't explain that meant that was the time all the paperwork gets done. No wonder he was back to his watches.” She slapped the finished page onto the top of the pile and moved to the next with a sigh. May's gaze drifted away from the stack of work to check the cover of the magazine. “Anything good in that one?”

“This article's pretty neat. You know the universe is like 95% or something just full of matter so weird that nobody knows what the hell it is? It's crammed up with so many things we haven't figured out yet. 27% dark matter, 68% dark energy. The rest is the stuff we actually see, like the stars and all.” Skye reached down to the bowl of goldfish crackers and grabbed a handful, at least one dropping down her sweatshirt. “They're working on some new scans, heck, they're inventing whole new math to crack that mystery. I love that, it's so weird. Kinda like our average workweek. Oh, there's also this great article on Lagos. You should read it, it's really cool.” She fished the stray cracker out.

“Pass it over here when you're done. I went to Lagos several years ago on an op.” May's voice drifted off, recalling it. “They had this great restaurant down one of the side streets, lines up like a mile or something to get in. I used my cover story to cadge a reservation. One of the best meals of my life. I wonder if it's still there.”

“We should go. Just grab the jet and go get some lunch. We'll pull Jemma out of the lab, make it a ladies night.” Skye shrugged. “We can, like, do a radar scan on the way for any rising problems so that we're still technically doing some work. Still, we never just do anything like that. What's gonna stop us? The paperwork? Hydra?”

“The refueling cost of the jet.” May smirked, not completely dismissing the idea yet. It was the akara with a spicy shrimp paste that stuck in her memory the most. She looked back down at her stack of paperwork and picked up the pen again. Phil was fine. He was a big kid.

. . .

The world spun and hummed. Coulson sat up with the phantom sensation of his brains sloshing around and felt sick to his stomach because of it, realizing immediately that where he hurt the worst was definitely behind his ear. He looked up at Rocket as he gently probed the soft and abused spot just behind his earlobe, not bothering to hide just how pissed off he was at the abrupt attack.

Rocket looked down at him and shrugged, saying something in what was now total gibberish. He pointed behind his own ear, then pointed at Coulson. Then, absurdly, he made the thumb and pinkie symbol for a phone call. It must be pretty close to universal. He followed it up by putting his hairy paw flat, then waggled two fingers to indicate walking.

That put the rest of the puzzle together and his anger drained.  _ They were tracking me by the translation chip Asgard gave me.  _ He looked around to try and figure out what was going on, realizing that while he was out, Groot must have picked him up to move them all to someplace safer. They were currently in what he figured by the litter was some unused miner's tool room, and the nauseating smells of something startlingly like motor oil and a richer, meatier smell mixed together in the air.  _ So whoever sold me up the river knew about the device. _

History gave him his first suspect.

_Loki?_

His more recent instincts didn't want to believe that. It didn't fit anything about the demigod's actions or attitude towards him since New York Round Two. He put it on the vague list of possibilities anyway, ever pragmatic. He looked up at Rocket and gave a slow set of nods, hoping that got across that he understood now and, mostly, forgave the thwack. It didn't do anything to settle his brain meats and the artificially induced migraine drifted across his sinuses for some extra joy.

Rocket grinned along his muzzle and gestured at his own ear again, twisting his paw like there was a wrench in it.  _ I'll fix the chip later.  _ He shrugged, gesturing over his shoulder.  _ When there's more time to finesse it and we ain't being shot at,  _ Phil guessed, his mental 'voice' for Rocket already tinted with the Jersey-like drawl. The little guy took a look around at their surroundings and grimaced. Clearly he wasn't liking the feng shui of their impromptu hidey-hole either.

Groot reached down and offered a hand to help him up, which he took with only a little bit of sway and some doubling of his vision as he got upright. Then he accepted the other bit of planning they'd gotten up to while he was out. He tugged at some horrible long grey jacket swaddling him that seemed to be made of torn strings and a fairly smelly kind of leather; the skin of no creature he'd ever be able to ID. Touching his face told him they hadn't done anything to him otherwise. Hiding his nice suit under a filthwrap was enough.

They led him out of the miner's nook, checking carefully up and down the tunnels for anyone approaching.

. . .

Touring their way back up into the more occupied regions of the dead head was a slow and meticulous process of flashing hand gestures at him and the occasional whispered variant of 'I am Groot.' That seemed to mostly need no translation, the three words sounding pretty much as they did a few hours earlier.

“How many do you think are in the colony looking for me?” he asked when they broke through to some of the main concourses again, still watching carefully for pursuers. At first he didn't expect a response. Then he realized  _ everyone  _ out here probably used translators of some stripe or another. There were simply too many worlds, too many different peoples to not come up with some way of ensuring communication. They could understand him alright. He was the only one stuck until Rocket got the tools to repair his chip.

Rocket glanced up at him and shrugged, proving his realization correct. He put up a fist, then started rolling his fingers. It took him a second but he got it. A lot. Great. He sighed. “Any simple way to tell me your gameplan?”

Rocket spun, walking backwards with his toenails clicking against the metal. He pointed at Coulson, pulled another fist, and dropped it like a rock, spreading the palm up like a wall. “Secure position. Got that part.” Pointed at Coulson, repeated the motion, then gestured at himself and Groot. “I stay in the secure position while you two peel off. To sweep for the pirates, I'm assuming.” A shrug of acknowledgment, a raised finger. “And?”

Another point at the duo. Then he waggled his hands, indicating something wild. Then the walk-away gestures again. “If you ever come by my place, we're gonna have a hell of a game of charades. You'd clean up. I stay, you two are going not  _ only  _ because of pirates, but because you two are immediately noticeable. I'm safer if you peel off. That about it?”

A wink atop a white-fanged grin.

“Okay. This is where I say I don't really agree because I hate sitting on my ass, but who's gonna listen to me, I can't speak space.” He spared a moment to consider his team back home, particularly May. He should have probably mentioned the paperwork backlog before jaunting off to the magical land of ballads and capital punishment.

Rocket shrugged, turning back to look where he was going. Yep, that was about the size of it. Well, that was just great.

. . .

The pair left Coulson in a dusty dive bar underneath a hanging chunk of flecked bone. Rocket seemed to know the multi-eyed bartender that ran the place, and another casual slide of a metal and plastic credit transfer chit meant the location was deemed decent for the short-term. Probably not the most secure place in the decapitation station, but they seemed confident that this place as about as forgotten as could be. It beat the miner's nook, sort of, though he faulted their logic for picking any sort of public and accessible zone. Too many variables for his comfort. On the other hand, the nook had reeked and he was already nauseous from his skullthump. He decided to be kindly and mark it as a wash.

He spent a little time staring at whatever drink he'd been given, deciding that he was probably safer with Rocket's bucket-brew hooch than whatever the hell it was in his glass. It smoked, faint and greenish. That was concerning enough right there. Once he'd had enough of staring at the drink, he started examining the people.

Most didn't spare him a glance in return, keeping to their own business. The bartender kept an eye on him now and again, but without anyone to tell him otherwise, he got up and started to check his boundaries. Main door, several windows onto the concourse outside, a second level above. Lots of observation eyes. Probably at least one side door somewhere behind the bar area, and there was definitely a room in the back. Okay. He could work with that.

So after an hour or so, when a couple of space pirates lucked out and sauntered into the dive for a drink, freezing in surprise when they saw their lost target just casually not-drinking at a rear table, Phil already had an escape plan in place. Before they moved,  _ he  _ moved, busting fast past the bartender and towards the back door he was pretty certain was there, more than a little cranked that Rocket hadn't spotted him a spare weapon. It occurred to him to wonder if his discovery was just the sort of casual bad luck that often followed Loki's antics around, or if Rocket had gotten that better offer he'd been warned about. On the other hand, he doubted Groot would stand for that.

Phil went ahead and logged it as bad luck  _ par excellence _ . 

There was certainly a doorway past the boggled bartender and his backlogged wares, though Phil had to juke past a couple kitchen people that were far less humanoid than he was used to at this point. One of them chittered at his intrusion, affronted and waving a huge whisk at him. The scene gave him a flicker of pause, and then he jolted his knees back into action and threw himself out the back door, hitting the metal grid 'street' running.

Incomprehensible hoots filled the air behind him. Yeah, they were probably going to catch up if he didn't think fast. Now he had no backup, no weapon, no way to properly communicate, no way to drop a line to his two guardians, and he didn't know where the hell he was going. Okay, so like an ordinary Tuesday at work. He could handle it. He grit his teeth and kept going, dotting up all the things he'd sort out once he found another defensible location.

A whistle of energy cut the air next to him and he added more zig to his zag. Taking a chance, he ducked across a wide lane full of people hauling heavy carts loaded with the local organic body trade, hoping that the impromptu game of Frogger would buy him a few more seconds of lead time. None of them spared him a glance. Taking another risk, he started pounding down darker alleys connected to other main thoroughfares. On one of these, he overbalanced and started to tumble. The connecting path wasn't quite on the same level as the ones he'd been running on, and he hit the ground with a muttered curse, pissed off that he probably just lost half the seconds of lead he'd gained.

He scrabbled at the filthy metal, ready to haul himself upright once more, and paused when a pair of soft, dark boots under the hem of an even darker robe walked up in front of him. He watched the ankles crease as the figure bent down, arms draped in heavy fabric wrapping themselves around the knees.

Coulson pulled his own knees back under himself as best he could, coming upright half-way to meet dark eyes in a bony, harrowed face. “Hello, Coulson,” said the not-quite-human woman in perfect English, her voice dull and sounding long disused. “I've been waiting for you.”


	12. Connective Tissue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first part of a double update, because I'm not comfortable with breaking the flow of these two chapters.

“We will catch up to your companions when these ones drift away.” The woman in the dark robe took Coulson down an impossible wend of disused halls carved roughly through mummified skull matter. No resources left here for the colony to rip free, just hollow places where the circulating air whistled through bone. She glanced over the tall cowl of her robe at him, bland amusement in her dark eyes. “This chaos was not expected, I note. But I think that simply happens around your friend.”

“Loki didn't warn you there might be trouble?”

“In reflection, I think I ought have assumed that was a given. I did not know better then.” She gave a faint, rattling chuckle. “Down here, left, and a little more. That will take us close to where this chase began.” She tugged at her hood with a gloved hand, her voice drifting low and meant mostly for herself. “Fitting. I do like cycles.”

Okay. Phil gamely followed her, trying to put together the right question that might give him answers to where and how Loki had picked her up as a stopgap ally. She'd dodged what few questions he'd managed to ask as she all but glided ahead of him. This much was clear – Loki'd sent her to meet him in Knowhere, having faith that his simpler trail would lead Coulson to that point. She was to guide him on the rest, and said as much regarding that when she helped him the rest of the way upright.

_ Why do you know English? _ got him nothing but an enigmatic smile.  _ How did you find me?  _ got even less than that, and she just kept moving, leading him who knew where.

He froze when he came to the end of the tunnel she'd found, his hands looking around for some new weapon to latch onto. Well below the wide open entryway was a handful of pirates milling around in a loose knot, muttering to each other while fudging around with various utilities. He assumed they were more tracking devices, set to a wider scan of some nature. Further away was Rocket and Groot, visible only from his vantage where they hid behind some crates, watching the pirates carefully as others drifted between the two groups. He hissed low at her back. “They're going to pick us up if we stay here.”

“They are not,” she shrugged, hunkering down like a vulture at the end of the tunnel to observe the scene below. “They have no longer any notion what to seek. And simple life seldom bothers to look up.”

That much was true to his experience, he had to admit.

“Wait. Watch.”

He shuffled forward carefully and watched a melee suddenly burst into wild action. Led and shielded by Groot, Rocket plunged into the fray still wielding a gun that had to be bigger and heavier than he was. The pirates stood firm against the onslaught for a few seconds, firing back and missing wildly, but most's nerves fractured fast and they broke and ran. Groot plunged after them to make sure they didn't double back. Rocket himself and ever the cheapskate wasn't particularly shooting to kill, but at least a few red coats got some brand new holes in them.

“Stormtrooper gambit,” Coulson said to himself. It was over shortly after that, the last one getting thunked upside the head rather like he had just a few hours previous.

“From the sounds, that's most of them that have tried to come after you. We've some time.” She gestured that he should move further forward. “They'll look for you now. May as well make it easy.”

. . .

Rocket scratched absently at his arm under the orange shoulder-sleeve, checking over his handiwork and fussing with some sort of tiny readout screen. “So ya picked up a lady while we were screwin' around with your wannabe new friends. You  _ are _ still a charmer, humie. Kind of a creeper one, though.” Coulson couldn't tell if he was the one being ripped on, or the lady in question. He gave Rocket a dirty look anyway.

Rocket flickered his beady gaze towards Groot, who was still studying the newcomer with an expression that even he with all his time spent with the tree-like colossus couldn't read. Fixing the chip while making sure the tracker didn't come alive again took a few deft moments. And nearly ripping off Phil's ear while the human grumbled at him. “Yeah, these things got a tracking element in them by design. I guess it's probably tactical on their end; find your non-demigodly buddies easy in the firefight and all that. You drew the crap reason to use it. Bet you been thinkin' a lot about  _ honorable _ Asgard since I dropped ya off.” He shoved the monitor back into one of his many pockets and glanced at the woman before glancing back at Coulson. “Bet ya also glad to have the chip working again.”

“Wasn't really enjoying feeling left out like that, no. Can't fathom what it'd be like to deal with that too much longer.” Coulson tapped gently behind his ear one more time, feeling the fresh, torn-up bump. He was going to have a bruise there for a month at least. Well, it wasn't the worst thing to happen to his skull. He swiveled on the stolen bench and regarded the woman. “So, what's next?”

She stole a glance at Groot, still watching her. Her expression was mild but otherwise unreadable in eyes somehow deeper and stranger than his. She unsettled Coulson just to look at now that the risk of further battle had faded, a sense of something behind her humanoid enough face that he couldn't put a finger on. Something oddly, uncomfortably familiar. “Your friend kept a sanctum here, well-hid. That much you've suspected. I was told you would never find it on your own by necessity, so I'm to bring you to its door. That was the heart of his request to me. A waymark, to ensure your trail.”

“Why the job, lady? What's he got on you?”

She didn't answer Rocket, only beckoned them to follow her with a single gloved finger.

. . .

_ You had one joke in you, didn't you? Even at your worst, you still set one up for me to find. _

The trail the woman took them on required undocking their ship and heading for a knot of floating rubble and other debris close to the floating head's vertebrae. Rocket looked at her with disbelief when she told them to hook the ship to a buried ledge, high underneath where the topmost chunk of spine met the base of the skull. He did it anyway, on the paid customer's request. Within there was a cavern countless miles wide, burying itself deep into fossilized organic matter. Readings indicated the atmosphere of Knowhere extended as far as this, but thinly. They had to be careful finding their path through the ruined, forgotten mining shantytown that was slowly falling apart inside the cavern. There were no resources left, just cold and hollow air.

And the floating stones, trapped within their own pockets of gravity and motion. Moving carefully between these found their way to a single door, hidden thoroughly within a massive chunk of rubble and marked only with a tiny device to lock it. The door was old. The device, however, was shiny and new.

_ And the rock cried out, no hiding place. You still had that one rock anyway, didn't you? You sneaky bastard. You were right. I wouldn't have come back here, not without a direct guide. No one would. _

Phil regarded the door set into the stone so perfect it was functionally an illusion, still thinking about Loki's possibly final wisecrack. “Did he have this built personally, or has it been here?”

“I've no idea. But the door is sealed and I was not given the passcode. Four marks upon its pad will open it. He did leave me a clue to grant.”

He glanced at her, still feeling the willies every time he met her unfathomable eyes. “We gonna have to play  _ animal, vegetable, or mineral  _ to get the clue, too?”

“He indicated you alone would know it in this context, no other. That the language was Earthly, and that should he ever impinge upon the integrity of that which is behind the code, there would be wrath.” She smiled dully. “His precise words were 'If I dinged it, he would find a way to erase me.'”

Phil blinked. “Huh.” He reached over to scan the pad and noticed that it was, in fact, pretty much laid out like the similar devices on Earth. Right down to the numerical/alphabetical layout. Then he tapped four keys: L – O – L - A.

A hiss of air and the door cracked inward.

“What's a Lola?” asked Rocket.

“A vehicle worth more to me than your life, and no, I don't care how much you got paid to shlep me around. It wouldn't change my statement.” Gingerly, Coulson reached out a finger to push the door open further.

“Sheesh, listen to Cap'n Sass here. Just cuz I smacked you upside the head real hard and considered – didn't, mind –  _ considered  _ making a little side money. Do I ever get a joyride in it? I'll toss in a copy of Quill's mixtape. No rebates on my contract, though.”

“It's licensed for Earth's atmosphere only.”

“I can fix that, easy.”

_ Tempting _ . He let himself inside Loki's hidden lair, his breath unconsciously held against what he might find inside.

. . .

_ Holy catcrap.  _ He stood in the entryway, stunned while the rest of his companions filed inside to see what he saw.  _ This is some 'A Beautiful Mind' action right here. Just missing the yarn maze across the walls. _

The tunneled out hideaway was at least twenty meters long and several wide, set with long shelves and pulled-out desks. Strewn across these were sheaves of paper, stacked books, scrawled-in journals that were clearly half-used and left aside as the resident's thoughts wandered, and still-flickering datapads scrolling their contents at some rapid pace. Mechanical and electrical components littered the interior, wires and other oddities spilling out of buckets and other haphazard containers. Some were carefully sealed, their contents still dangerous. A half-dozen terminals of a sleek and streamlined advanced make fit to make both Apple and IBM jealous filled a control-bank at the back of the space, and alongside that was a wide expanse of wall plastered over with sketches and arcane notations in that familiar, elegant script that was Loki's hallmark.

One long, fluttering piece of work drew Coulson's eye. Six flecks of shape and color, connected in some sort of impenetrable pattern. Magic, he figured. It looked kinda like some Harry Potter stuff. The woman drifted past him to regard it, her face blank. “You know what that is?” he asked her.

“Don't you?” She regarded him with that same unfathomable look, then turned to look again at the drawing.

“I...” Not really wanting to, he came up next to her. One of the colors caught his eye and he squinted at it, recognizing suddenly the geometric shape. “The Tesseract,” he said under his breath.

“Oh, hey, I recognize that purply one!” blurted Rocket. Then he crossed his arms, pissed at himself. Groot looked down at him with a chiding expression. “No I don't, I said nuthin'.”

Coulson stared at Rocket anyway.  _ Little stone. Couldn't cross-ref that at the time, but there it is. Connected to the Tesseract somehow. _ He looked away, examining the rest of the prodigious amount of  _ stuff  _ Loki left everywhere. “Okay, that's fascinating, but I don't think that relates right now.” His voice was hesitant. Did he know that for certain? Well, meanwhile, he'd take that in when it was time.  _ Assess the scene, Phil. Dig. Everything you need is here.  _ He set his jaw and tried to figure where to start.

“Why's he got so much paper? Ain't efficient.” Rocket shoved at a pile, already bored now that his attention was away from the strange artwork.

“Doesn't matter where you are in the galaxy, or what your technology level is.” Coulson glanced at him, then continued down the long space towards the terminals. “You can't remote hack a book.”

“You can steal it, however,” added the woman, her voice amused by something meant for herself alone. She was still regarding the six flecks of color and shape.

“Hence the obscure hideaway.” Phil reached out and flicked on the terminals, guessing rightly that the control switch was the obvious one that was also, absurdly, labeled  _ ON/OFF.  _ The terminals flared to life, each one paused on a specific image. The stages of a planet in explosion, modeled through predictive data. It matched almost perfectly the reality of what he'd seen in Asgard's recording.

“Oh God,” he said to himself, realizing fully what that meant. There was a chair set before the terminals and he slid down into it, his legs numb. “He really did do it.”

The woman came up next to him. He could  _ feel  _ her presence, and it was a cold spot in the world. “Now look again. Closer.” She glanced down at him, her voice curiously gentle. “This was the rest, the soul of his request. Do not turn away yet, he begs you through my message.  _ See.  _ For no one else would or could.”

He felt frozen, stuck against what he saw. “I  _ can't _ . There's no justification-”

“Death does not require justification,” said the woman, and her voice was unstoppable stone. “We can seek only understanding.  _ Look. _ I ask now. For the sake of that understanding.”

“Who are you?” The numbness that stopped his legs came to his lips and he didn't look at her.

“I am a thief. Nothing else.” She put a gloved hand on his shoulder, still gentle through the chill of her fingers. “And I seldom mean to be unkind.”

He reached out and woke the screens with a tap of his finger, putting the things they knew into motion once more.


	13. The Trolley Problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second part of today's update.

The terminals didn't hold only the predictive data. They held footage from the doomed world itself; surreptitiously recorded somehow and uploaded. Strange and wild landscapes filled the screens, complicated biodiversity he could never have imagined – unlivable to humans, certainly. From time to time he saw the residents flicker through the recordings. Some of them were enormous; mighty and tall with arms made of something like flexible stone and bright yellow moss. Dust and sand swirled around in complicated patterns as the giants moved in deliberate slowness.

Other beings were knotted vines of multi-colored flesh, slinking through their wet homelands of arcing tree roots and still pools of some iridescent muck that was, in its way, chaotically beautiful. Creatures and lifeforms he couldn't possibly understand, elegant in their impenetrability. Now, because of Loki's act, no one would ever solve what or who they were. The sick feeling returned, but he kept looking.

_ EXCLUSION PLANET 4815162342-a  _ read a notation attached to the footage. Loki's own typed notes remained underneath.  _ The great ones call their world something like 'Skata'loach.' I don't know what that means. Closest I've gotten is 'dry place of stone and care,' but there is a slow subtext that takes weeks to emerge in their telling. I cannot follow it, and I try. Plodding time for these, no quick thoughts nor idle conversation. The vinelings know their regions and world as the vastly simpler 'wetplace.' And the others underground, I cannot hear. No others will, I suppose. _

There was a scrap of parchment shoved under the terminal. Coulson pulled it out as the alien nature footage continued.  _ Do not forget,  _ it read. The fine handwriting wavered, as if written by a shaking hand.

“I don't understand,” he muttered, unnerved. “What am I looking at?”

No one answered his rhetorical. The thief woman had gone back to musing over the wall art, her gloved hands occasionally roaming Loki's collected books and journals with no clear purpose.

The predictive data began to scroll again, replacing the footage. He shook his head, looking at the energy readings from the model and trying to piece it all together. “Okay. Rocket?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“Your ship finish processing those scans from the debris?”

“Oh, yeah. While back, but not all _that_ long ago. Glad ya asked.” Rocket swaggered up to him, unfazed by the data displays. He shoved the datapad into his hands. “So, yeah, there's something weird there. Good call, running our own checks.”

Coulson scanned the pad, looking up to match it with Loki's data. “Help me out.”

“There's two distinct types of energy signatures, humie. Not a singular type, like your notes suggested. Wasn't one source what did this.” Rocket indicated the scrap around the room. “And that first one? Not something I've ever seen built, so there's half the ord component tracking out the hatch. I know that for professional fact. The other stuff?” He gestured at the buckets of components strewn around the hideaway. “Yeah. This all is gonna lead noplace. It's been scrubbed.”

He leaned forward to expand the data on the screen, comparing it with the third readout from Rocket. Right. Some of the predictive data Loki used to model a planetary explosion was relying on an initial 'primer' charge, which was itself obscure. From there it was textbook demolition, in some huge and monstrous way. It matched what actually happened, but seeing it now laid out in careful planning gave rise to new questions. “The first energy burst across the surface made way for the second interior one a while later?”

“Yeah, helped charge up whatever he used. Harnessed the energy, converted it to some deep-core implosionary stuff. 'S why so much of the debris stayed close if it wasn't just toasted outta existence – sucked in first 'round the core before knocking the moons out with the force of the waves after. Anyway. Heavy duty planet cracking. Usually people wanta blow something up that hard, they convert star power. Solar energy, or maybe antimatter doohickeys – those are frisky, you wanna be careful with antimatter. Stuff annihilates like a boss. But the energy's gotta come from somewhere. I thought he'd be yanking off the giant red star at the center of the orbit. Not this. This is freaky. Came from the planet itself. With that much power, it's probably not like he needed some fancy-ass rig to actually make the crack happen. This was homebrew, baby.” Rocket's hands flew across the pad, trying to show him what he meant.

“How?”

“Beats me. Never seen anything like that before. Never seen a machine produce it. Almost organic, like. It flickers, you see there in the math? Like some chaos theory stuff I've seen.”

“Life is mutable. Hard to graph simply.” The woman placed one of Loki's books next to Coulson's hand. “I found this, recognized it. He studied a similar copy while I was observing him. He must have acquired his own edition somehow, itself quite a quest.”

“What, you guys met in a library? Pfff, who uses those?” Rocket slumped his butt against one of the low desks, his tail moving deftly out of his way. He spared a glance for Groot, still wringing his branchy hands together near the entrance. Poor guy was really off his plant feed today.

“A library, just so.”

“Of actual books. He must have dug the hell out of the place. What a galaxy we've got, huh?” Coulson opened the tome, unable to read the language inside. It seemed to be an old biological text of some kind. He flicked through, looking for something he could recognize or relate to. When he found it, he sat back hard enough that the chair made a thunking noise of protest. “I _know_ those.”

Rocket leaned forward, studying the grotesque anatomical drawing splayed across the two ragged pages. It was some massive, wormlike beast coated in chitinous armor. Graphic notations clear enough to decipher indicated where it was spiked through to insert cortex controls, and others where to install troop transports and gigantic slabs of plate. “I don't. Ugly though. What is it?”

“Chitauri Leviathan. Well, 'leviathan' is our classification because 'big-ass worm dreadnaught' doesn't look pro on the paperwork. Anyway, New York got smacked around by something like a half-dozen of these things when Loki went ham and opened a portal for his army. If we hadn't had the Avengers right there in the city prepared for this, just those few probably would have ripped up our planet good.” He shrugged, distractedly recalling the footage he'd seen. “Sure, I was dead at the time, but when I found out about 'em, it got my attention something fierce. Wouldn't want to see them come back for another round at any price.” He continued to flicker through the book, wishing his translator affected more of what he could read, too. He'd been fortunate enough so far, but this text must simply be too old to be in the current language file.

“Wait, dead?” Rocket scratched under his own chin. It was his turn to look at Phil with disbelief.

“It's complicated.”

Rocket shrugged, his dismissal irrationally annoying Phil. “Whatever, buddy.”

_“iamGroot....”_ The murmur was quiet but sincere. Rocket paused in his scritch, staring at his buddy. Groot nodded to underline his point. That made Rocket go quiet. He didn't bother to translate aloud what he heard. It was for him to chew over.

The woman's hand flickered into his view to point at another set of graphics further on inside the book. “You see them? This is their cycle.”

Phil traced the drawings with his finger, puzzling them out. The insertion of an egg sac. Then its development and growth, multiplying the sac's size incredibly. Larval stage. Full birth. The drawings indicated a massive knot of writhing creatures; each hatching creating thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of new Leviathans. “Insertion where? How? What births something like this?” He turned the page, freshly horrified at the illustrations and what they suggested. _“Oh.”_

The heart of a planet. The monstrous sac brewing and growing inside a suitable core from a comparatively tiny artificial insertion by the Chitauri's unknown masters. The larvae tunneling throughout the world's layers and slowly evolving; monstrous worms tearing apart the apple from deep within for their own selfish need. And a sketch of the flash heralding new creatures ready to be tamed and slaved to their crews.

“The words say they feed on the lifeforce of the planet's inhabitants to nourish their own once they're ready to burst forth. The last gorging before emergence, the rest of the lifeforce left to drift away in waste. Nothing survives but the newborn beasts. Engineered atrocity, a mockery of life's natural cycle.” Her voice was full of chilly disapproval.

Phil put the book down and rested his forehead in his hands, trying to absorb that in context with everything he'd seen since leaving Asgard. Tying together the knots and whorls of Loki's mind into something more like a straight line. It took a long time before he began to talk. “He knows the Chitauri. Used them. Maybe he was used by them, I don't know. So he found a planet somehow that either got or was about to get an insertion of new Leviathans, a pod that would make enough of them to prepare an army of impossible numbers.”

He fumbled for his pad again, recalling the 'phone records.' He studied the scroll of information, hundreds of requests to connect. “And he tried to tell people. You did, didn't you? All these numbers you called, either getting more information or trying to tell someone, anyone, find anyone that would listen. And they all hung up on you, because you're _you_. You've got a rep everywhere, so I keep hearing. The Prince who Cried Chitauri. So what was left?”

He put the pad down and let the projection roll again. “You knew firsthand what would happen if they got out. If they were released on the galaxy, and this time you decided, no matter what, that couldn't happen. So you went to the planet. You saw the life there, life you can't rescue because you can't do it on your own and these environments... they're unique.”

The primer flash filled the screens again. “And you couldn't kill them yourself, could you? Was it because you needed the harnessed energy flash to use your own device, or did you just realize you couldn't? I don't know that part, can't say for sure. But you recorded what you could. You found their words. The Leviathans killed everything on the surface. You killed the Leviathans before they finished bursting out of the planet. Killing the planet, too.” He sagged, realizing something familiar about the scenario Loki created for himself. “The trolley problem.”

“What?” Rocket looked sharply at him.

“Classic thought experiment. You're out for a walk along some train tracks. You come up to a lever that controls the tracks, switches them from one railway to another. Looking down the way currently set, you realize there's five people tied up. Looking down the other set and there's one other person just wandering on them. And as you realize that, you hear the sound of the train practically right on top of you. So what do you do?” He glanced at Rocket. “You have nothing to go on but the hard data. You don't know the people. So is it five or one? Do you do nothing and let the five die, thereby maybe technically not shouldering any moral weight? Or do you change the tracks and kill the single person on the other side, figuring that five is a greater value than one but now taking responsibility for actively killing someone?”

“Empty musing, if interesting.” said the woman. “In reality, there is so much more to consider than numbers alone.”

“Yeah, that's the problem when you take it into the real world. All sorts of wrinkles can come into the scenario. For a real example, on our planet, pilots will always try to divert a troubled plane away from a high population center. If they can. They're trained to minimize loss. If there's a third option available, they'll take it. Save what you can. Do anything you can.”

He continued. “He's already involved the second he walks up to these tracks, though. He's got connection, can't change that. So what's worse for him – walk away and let a new Chitauri army at someone's command enslave thousands of warbeasts, any handful of which can tear apart another world? Or end a planet he thinks he can't save to buy the entire galaxy a breather, maybe getting the warning out...” Comprehending hit him in a flash; the fullness of the reason _he_ was the one out there trying to pull together the truth of the story. “...In a way where people might actually listen when they don't want to hear. _Jesus_.”

“He's boned either way, from a moral viewpoint.” This apt commentary from a shrugging Rocket.

Coulson nodded. “Could he have saved them? Was there any way?” He looked at the note again – _Do not forget._ “He didn't believe so. I've got evidence now that he tried to find one. That doesn't make it better. Doesn't erase it.”

“But it provides understanding,” came the grave voice. “He spent long days in that place where I met him. Looking for guidance and finding little, fretting at the ethics of thousands of worlds and losing himself in wine. I watched as he approached despair. But what is there to find? Only words, Coulson. Words do not change. Only the living. Even those who once believed they did not need to can change. He surprised me, I found.” He looked up at her and found she was smiling. “So he has another question to keep him company – can he live with himself for this choice? Can others live around him? Or, in the end, should he be executed and left to wither and rot alongside that what he has made? Would that perhaps be _kinder_?”

“He'd want to live,” Coulson said, feeling instinctively that was right.

“But _can_ he? There is no easy recovery from this. What rings these changes? Did he know what he would bear, when he turned away from his first path and looked again for some second life in himself? Some compassion? In the end of his first life, he at least would have the mercy of his own blinding madness. Now he has only the past he cannot erase, and things that must be unforgiven.”

He sighed, taking that in too. “Okay. That's uplifting, and I don't have an answer. Maybe it's not for me to answer.” He shook his head, looking at the screens and thinking through the pattern again. “Well, meanwhile, that's the working theory. I want more than that, lots more if I'm going to go back to Asgard and let them chew this one over with me. We're gonna go over all the stuff here, see what supports the theory, see what doesn't fit and if it builds up a different theory.”

“But you believe you are correct,” she said, not questioning.

“Yeah. I do. But that's not where the job ends. I gotta be able to back that as much as I can, get as much evidence and check all the holes in the theory. Asgard needs to know the full truth of what he did. Can only make a judgment that way, and maybe that won't be enough to let him live. But the truth is the only chance he's got. If he even really wants that chance.” He pulled the crystal thumb-drive out of his pocket. “Rocket, you're number-crunching again.”

“Oy.”

 


	14. A Final Gift

Rocket was snoring in a corner of the hideaway, a pad drooping from his slack hand while his hairy head lolled against the back of his chair. Groot watched patiently over him, little bioluminescent lights flickering from his shoulders to soften the otherwise dim glow of the place. Hundreds of hours of recompiled data filled his crystal thumb-drive and against it Coulson's initial supposition remained functionally intact. In the end there were details that only Loki could know; emotional decisions that would not be told through the numbers alone. He didn't know if Loki would be permitted to explain any of this on his own behalf once he himself presented the findings to Asgard; didn't even know if Loki should try.

Coulson rubbed a palm across his hairline, exhausted and full of things he barely understood. The woman was back at the wall artwork, having done more than her part in continuing to explain the biology of what had occurred in the core of the doomed world. Transcriptions of her verbal notes had its own tab in his data. It would be a vital help during his presentation. He'd be bringing a few of Loki's books back, too. “So what's the story with those six things? I can't find a reason for them to be directly linked to this, but you're pretty fixated.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “Someday you might understand more of them than you will today.” She glanced over the cowl of her robe at him with a little smile. “But I'll tell you a fraction of their tale if you like, so that one day you will have that context.”

“God, someday I'm going to make a new friend that _doesn't_ riddle at me all day. Between you and Loki, it's like Vague and Obnoxious put on a modern art display. And I'm part of the bizarre punchline.” He let his palm run down the side of his face so that he could wearily drop his chin into it.

“But you will not make that less convoluted friend this hour,” she said, the smile broadening.

“Nope,” he mumbled gamely through his hand. “Let's have it.”

. . .

“Before this universe was another one, Coulson. That universe was utterly itself; one entity of incomprehensible vastness of which the word _space_ is so small to be utterly meaningless. Its mind and soul formed the firmament entire, from the light of the cosmos to the darkness between. Reality bent to its whim, and time was marked each second as eternity. There was only existence for the sake of existence, and in this fullness of pure power, the universe existed and grew and created questions for itself. As all things that exist sooner or later wonder - _Was simple existence enough?_

“With all infinity contained within it, the universe was more than sentient. It Was. And in time that was infinity that was the blink of microseconds, it learned – it created – the concept of loneliness. To save itself against that stretching bleakness, it created one final new power, a thing that had never existed before. One last gift. In that flash that was the last second of one existence and also the first of a new one, it taught eternal infinity about _death._

“From the corpse of the old universe sprang the new, driven, you might imagine, as if by the renewing forces of a phoenix. And into this newborn universe dripped six tears from the old, now in some sense the memory of a God-That-Was-Once-Infinity. These tears contained a distinct essence within each. The consuming intensity of pure power. The heaviness of the soul. The endless rangings of the mind. The sharpness of reality. The eternal clock of time. The vastness of space. In the lost universe's six tears, that unwitting farewell, these concepts became incarnate.” She shrugged, still amused by something. “To find all six would be to wear the glove of lost infinity and become ultimate. Without balance. Without equal. With only that shadow of Death to haunt you, should you be wise enough in your omnipotence to recall that final and first lesson. The lessons of the finite.”

Coulson chewed that over, glancing now and then at the image of the Tesseract. What incarnation of infinity did the troublesome little cube represent? It didn’t really matter. He believed that the limitless potential of the thing definitely could be part of something greater. More terrifying. He made his voice wry, mostly so he could distract himself from his own disturbance. “You should have come to Earth in the Sixties. You would have really liked the acid trips.”

She turned slightly and the smile became sardonic when she met his eyes.

“Maybe you did.” He sighed. “But what you're telling me... Loki knows all that?”

She glanced at the drawings of the stones. “Some of it, it seems. The tale I tell you is a legend. Others tell it differently. But it's told, Coulson, and the stones are quite real. They are hunted - you've been a victim of that hunt before, I'd say. Sometimes they are drawn to one another, lost friends. Echoes seeking their own.” She reached out and plucked the paper free from the wall, rolling it into a tight scroll and putting it away somewhere in her robe. He didn't try to stop her. “And they are desired.” Now it was her turn to sigh wearily.

Coulson resettled in his chair, pushing at some of the now-messy stacks. Movement caught his eye and he glanced up to notice Groot watching him. Still with that lingering expression of something he couldn't quite be sure of. Like a fear he didn't want to run from. He looked back to the woman. “Is there any chance you can come with us back to Asgard? You could help me tell them what I've seen here. I think I'm pretty good at meetings, but I like having backup for when I get out of my league.”

She shook her head in a single sharp move. “I can't. You've everything you need and my time here's nearly run out. I've paid what I owe and I must move on.”

“You owed Loki?”

“Yes.” A flicker of a gloved hand across some of the forgotten journals. “For the sake of some personal whimsy, he did me a kindness.” She looked up to regard Coulson with dark, bemused eyes. “...And he let go.”

There was an import to her words that he didn't understand.

. . .

Rocket was still _out._ Little guy could sleep like a boss. He was kinda envious of just how knocked out and relaxed the hairball looked, though at the same time, Phil got the sense that the merc life didn't really allow for luxurious power naps too often. Groot carried him out of the hidden lair well ahead of the pair, whispering _“iamgroot”_ over his shoulder at the pair. Phil got it, sort of. Rocket could doze till they were ready to get out of Knowhere. It'd be a little hike back to the ship anyway. “He likes you,” said the thief woman, smiling at the back of the broad brown trunk.

“What, Groot? Yeah, I got that.” Coulson shrugged, his hands in his pockets. “Don't know why, honestly. I can barely communicate with him.”

“You speak with each other more than you know.” She chuckled, the sound rattling in the back of her throat. “He likes you because you understand the fleeting worth of life.” She patted at his arm and the hand was colder than ever. “There is kindness in you, and it drives as many of your decisions as you might permit it.”

“I sometimes get told being too nice is a liability. Gonna give the wrong person another chance sooner or later.”

She gave him a sideways glance, her lips curving in a wry smile. “In my opinion, the attempt is worthy. It makes for a warmer universe. Hope is drifting enough to find, and there is much darkness between the worlds by nature's design. No need to expand on it.”

He took that in while they walked, decided to go for a half-joke. “You're a secret optimist?”

She laughed and didn't answer.

. . .

For a time they walked in silence, watching carefully for cracks in their path or other hazards.

He watched her now and then as they walked back towards the hidden ledge, still pulling together questions he decided he didn't have the nerve to ask. Ahead, Groot was already nudging Rocket awake at the ship's hatch. The little furry paw slapped up at his bark without any malice, the muzzle muttering things without any anger behind it. Coulson watched the pair with a grin. They were mercs at the call of Mighty Dollar, but he liked them anyway. The still-twinging bruise behind his ear regardless. “You sure we can't take you back to the main levels of this place?”

“I've no need. My next travels are well prepared.” There was a finality to her voice. She reached out and took his hand in her gloved one, gently. Courtly. It made the coldness that suffused her forgettable and painless both. “Remember the stars, Coulson. They do not forget.”

_Who are_ _you?_ He looked at her inhuman face and nodded, thinking of the time he was dead while his brain filled with snapping images of the universe. He wondered if he might not actually know the answer after all. If such a thing were even possible. Having now seen for himself a fragment of the strangeness of the galaxy, the hints of those six stones joined together in some fate, he supposed it was possible for vague concepts to find some sort of firm incarnation. He looked at the ship and saw Groot waiting patiently for him. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “I'll remember.”

She stepped away, watching Coulson approach the ship past Groot, its engines beginning to flicker into life. She smiled in a farewell as Coulson turned when he found himself at the hatch, and then she looked surprised when Groot began to walk hesitantly towards her.

The woman and the tree regarded each other for a little time. Then, Groot slowly lifted his arm to show her the tiny, beautiful flower that was growing along his wrist. He plucked it free between two thick fingers and presented it to her, letting it drop into her cupped hands. Her fingers tightened carefully around the gift without crushing it, and much to Coulson's surprise, the dark eyes gleamed as if they were damp.

Groot gave her one of his childlike, kind smiles, though he would not actually touch her. Then he turned to come back to the ship one last time. He looked peaceful.

The woman lifted one hand in a farewell. And that was how they left Knowhere, as the outline of the woman in the dark robe faded into the shadows of the dead God and the ship broke free into its faster-than-light final race back towards Asgard.


	15. Good Intentions Avenue

Coulson watched empty space rush past the ship's cockpit, the colors of reality seeming to shift at the edge of his vision as the ship took him on the first step towards home. Now somewhat used to the vastness of the galaxy – if not exactly up to thinking about an individual's place in the universe entire – he allowed himself a single, jaw-cracking yawn.

“We got a little while yet if you wanna nap.” Rocket stretched in his pilot's seat, his sharp toenails catching the light as his feet spread wide not unlike a dozy cat's. “Been a hell of a few days for ya, humie.”

“It's been interesting. Educational.”

“Oh yeah, that's what the crapholes of the galactic backwater are. They are _very_ educational, alright.” He snickered. “The Uni courses of Scumbaggery. You think you got what you need?”

Coulson pulled the crystal out of his pocket to regard it. The books and other evidence were bundled into a neat sack in the port room he'd been using. The rest, including the timeline of events, was filed away in his mind and ready to be called on. “Don't know about need. Think I've got everything I can, yeah. Don't know if it's enough.”

“Y'know, it's kinda weird for what little I know of this Loki of Asgard Odintot or whatever. Wasn't it sorta straightforward, really?” Rocket glanced up at Phil, watching the thoughtful expression turn inward. “ _I_ always heard the guy was all sorts of twisted up. Power plays and whatnot. But your trip was pretty much Asgard, crime scene, backwater hole, hideaway. Bing-bang-boom. Okay, the hideaway needed a guide, but still. Wasn't no mindbender of a trip. Hell, even the credits cleared with no drama.”

“I've thought about that from time to time, yeah. Although as a human, the floating skull in space back there? Total mindbender.” He smiled slightly. It wasn't a cheerful one. “I think part of the straightforwardness of this was another of Loki's little jokes. Meant pretty much just for me.”

“Eh?”

“He knew how this was going to look from the get-go. He knows his rep, so why overdo it? Why wear himself out? He doesn't _have_ to go full-Hitchcock with his plan. Nobody's going to look past the obvious anyway, no one's going to check out the details. No one's gonna go to bat for his sake, not really even his brother. Too many people believe if they try to think ahead of Loki, they're going to get screwed. I mean, this is a pretty understandable point of view, Rocket. I've held it for a long time myself. So he's got a crime that can be pinned on him easy, no digging required. And he wears it openly. He really did drive up the street to say ' _okay, come get me_ ,' despite what I know of him.”

“But he _needs_ someone to dig if he's got any crack at saving his own ass. So he calls you, knowing that even if it's that simple, you'll do that digging?”

“Yeah.” Phil sighed. “He knows that I _know_ all that, and I'll still try to look at the entire scene fresh anyway. That I'll know that, okay, maybe he _did_ slum it at some dive. But I'll also suspect that wasn't all that stop meant.” _You're a good and honest man, Coulson._ He rubbed his fingers hard across his forehead, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with his physical body. “He played his one carefully chosen gamble, dropping the entire bet on what he thought he understood about my nature. Probably the first time since he became a professional jackass that he used someone without setting out to break them.” He sighed again, heavily. “Well, it's a start.”

“You're a good humie,” said Rocket, echoing his own memories. “It's gonna get your ass beat into a protein paste one of these days.” Rocket started to snort derisively, the sound dying in his throat as Coulson suddenly broke into hard and hearty laughter. “What?”

“That's basically how this whole thing with him got started,” managed Coulson, and then he started laughing again.

. . .

Coulson could see the thickly towering figure awaiting him even as the hot rod ship began to ease into its docking routines. The ship tilted towards one of Asgard's almost grudgingly placed landing platforms, slowing its approach to better finagle the final drop. “They coulda sped up the permissions,” Rocket muttered, slapping around the controls as the ship plopped onto its target destination. Dock patterns and harbor reports scrolled on a sidescreen, now disregarded in favor of winding down critical systems and forming a firm lock with the platform. “Coulda done laundry for the time they had us dicking around in a holding pattern. Welp. Here we are. That meatslab out there your welcoming party?”

Phil nodded, still considering the entirety of his trip. He tugged the neatly knotted evidentiary satchel out from under him, slipping the strap over his shoulder. “That's Volstagg, one of Thor's friends.”

“You move with a big crowd, humie.” Rocket popped the hatch, letting the ship's atmosphere hiss as it matched the inside with the outside. Outside, Volstagg approached the ship with a broad smile. Rocket eyed him with toothy distrust. “If he tries to suggest eating me, I'm gonna roll weapons hot. Fair warning.”

“I won't let him eat you.” He shoved Rocket's borrowed datapad under his arm. Rocket didn't seem to notice.

“Dude looks like he's gotta eat _something_ every five minutes or he gets all cranky. That axe he's got stuffed in his belt is bigger'n me.” Rocket muttered, glancing up as Coulson began to move towards the hatch. Groot was already stepping out of the back to meet him. “Not that that means much, look at half my stuff. Hey.”

Coulson glanced back over to him, eyebrow arched.

Rocket muttered, the noise grudging. His beady eyes flickered to the display and its blue-outlined image of Volstagg again. “You need anything, I'm paid up till either your buddy croaks or walks.” He crossed his furry arms, jutting his chin at Phil. “You're a smart humie. You know _somebody_ paid those Ravagers to rig the board.”

Phil smiled easily. “I haven't forgotten, Rocket. Thanks.” He turned to find himself eye level with a massive bark torso. He put up a hand. “Thank you too, Groot.”

“I am _Groot_.” Groot took the hand, giving it a cautious, awkward shake. Then he patted the human on the head before leaning in. _“i am grooot,”_ he whispered into Coulson's ear.

Coulson looked speculatively into the black eyes before nodding, showing that this time, he definitely got the tone behind the singular phrase.

_Be careful._

_. . ._

“Your arrival is well-timed. Thor, of his goodly heart, spends many hours fretting on your journey.” Volstagg kept his eyes on the path ahead, rumbling an easy and welcoming chuckle.

Phil shrugged, glancing down as the golden roads rushed past the quick-speeding cart. After the myriad colors of deep space, the glorious strangeness of Asgard almost paled. Almost. “It went just fine.” He glanced back at Volstagg as the tallest spires of the great castle began to draw closer, sketched sharp against the horizon. “You know. As enjoyable as any homicide investigation is. It was work. It went _okay_.”

“And you have no doubt served your role as advocate as best you may.” Volstagg sighed. “No easy task, doing the bidding of one like that monster that walks in the shape of a man. A brave mortal, that takes. Regardless of the outcome.”

Phil didn't blink at Volstagg's description of Loki. From the Asgardian's perspective, it had a reason to be as harsh as that. He kept his voice casually chatty, keeping his own opinions to himself. “Regardless. Kinda surprised Thor didn't meet me.”

“Oh, 'twas his wish. But Odin keeps him close until the trial is a done matter. Politics, you see. The usual dull affairs of seeming and seeing. I offered my hand to this little task instead, to ease his last concerns. When it is over, I am certain there will be much feasting and much time for lost joys.” He rumbled a chuckle. “I met you so briefly, but he speaks heartily of you. Much celebration in he, for knowing now that Loki's cruelty did not curse you to be eternally lost.”

Coulson looked up at the great golden fortress. “Oh, I got lost,” he murmured to himself, thinking about the cold woman. _And he let go,_ whispered the echo, and he wasn't quite sure why. “Then I found myself on the way back.”

“You're a good man and brave warrior.” Volstagg sighed, turning the quick cart and its phantasmal horses towards a stable near the base of the tall castle. “Thor chooses his allies kindly and well.”

_Got a regular refrain up in all this today._ He looked away, still thinking ahead.

. . .

Volstagg guided him through the wide and countless halls of the castle, rumbling hearty greetings to uniformly plated golden guardsmen and servants as they passed. His meaty hand was tucked in his belt as he moved in long strides. Feeling vaguely like he was back in grade school behind the then-gigantic teachers, Phil had to struggle to keep pace, the satchel of evidence jostling on his shoulder. Sometimes he snuck in a little jog as they turned junctions and drifted up gently slanting corridors.

After no small amount of time traveling the castle, Volstagg stopped confidently before a wide wooden door. He gave it a knock, then opened it inward, peering into the room beyond. “Hanh.” He pulled his head back out and gestured Coulson inside with a heavy wave. “He's not here yet.”

“The All-Father?” Coulson paused, considered, then went in on a _what the hell_ and a ready _bring it._ He was sick of running from new things in a big universe, and besides, he had a plan.

“Aye,” said Volstagg, following him in from behind.

The room was wide and warm, long benches set along a fiery hearth the size of a Cadillac. Across a heavy wooden table were strewn bowls of fresh fruit and goblets of beer and water. It certainly _looked_ like a room a King might chill in now and then, Coulson had to admit that. Then he turned to regard Volstagg where he stood between him and the door. “He's not coming,” he said, nothing of a question in his voice.

Volstagg stepped back once to fill the door's frame, bowing his head apologetically. “I mean you no harm, good Coulson. I swear to that.”

“Yeah. You gave it away meeting me at the port.” Coulson laced his fingers together in front of him, watching the mournful expression twist and then blend with surprise on the big warrior's face. He went for a tone both disapproving and deadpan himself. “Big delay during a slow schedule. Rocket ran the reports, there was no reason for us to be up there that long. Except that you needed time to draw off my _actual_ city escort. Y'know. Since your paid space pirates flubbed the job. Did you keep your receipts? You should probably try to get a refund. Not that you actually will.”

“I am not made of great lies and winding plans. Not like that _creature_ you were forced to serve.”

“I wasn't forced.” He couldn't help chiding the near-giant, though it was clear by Volstagg's now-frantic behavior he wasn't going to listen to much else on the topic.

“That you cannot see the cage does not mean one is not there!” Volstagg's voice became pleading and desperate. “This is the heart of how that one works. Surely you see, son of Coul. He cannot go free. He _must not_ go free. If not this catastrophe, which one will end him? I think it will be one long after his ending of _us_.” Volstagg shook his head once, sharply. “I see no other outcome possible. If Thor cannot permit the final strike, then I must do what I can. For our people. For our safety. Let that dead world stand in sacrifice to the salvation of our own.”

“Volstagg.”

He was cut off, as expected. “No, friend of Asgard. I will beg of thee a great forgiveness when this is over.” Volstagg lifted his head, stepping back one more time. “You have food and water and warmth for some time. These halls do not see regular patrol today nor for some time and so they will not hear you. I will check to ensure your safety. And so, Loki's advocate will not return in time to speak for him, for good or for ill. His place will be forfeit to what is seen and known. Already I have asked the harbor for favor to say that the ship you traveled within has gone unseen. And when Asgard is safe and the serpent slain, you will be set free and sent well home. I swear this on my honor.” He pulled the door shut, no longer able to look at Coulson.

Coulson stared at the sturdy wooden door and sighed. “Okay,” he said, rolling his eyes tiredly up to the golden ceiling. At least the giant man was proving himself continually to be not much of a conspirator – a good one would have torn away his satchel to get rid of the evidence. No, he knew the Asgardian felt his heart was in the right place. This was not some stunt born out of evil. Just another consequence of what Loki's past deeds taught the people he once knew.

He set the satchel gently aside, considering what he should do based on the contingency plans he'd already set up. First, he tugged the borrowed – now sort of technically stolen - datapad out of his inner jacket to set off an alert to the hot rod ship and its crew. Then he looked again to be sure the door's thick and simple hinges were, in fact, on the inside with him.

And then he put his hand in his pants pocket for the good jeweler's pliers that he knew, no matter what, would be there.


	16. Lumberjacking

Groot gently lifted the unconscious Asgardian and put his body with the other three they'd dropped while looking for disguises that might actually fit, slipping the long golden robe free as he did so. “I am grooooot,” he muttered to Rocket, watchful black eyes flickering down the visible corridor of the port.

Rocket wrestled with the much smaller – but still oversized – floofy fabric wrap of lavender and copper, his out-of-place fur hidden under its folds. “Yeah, I gotcha. Man, these guys really pack a wallop.” He tugged the comparatively huge pulse rifle back into position on his shoulder, hoping it didn't break the line of his disguise too much. “I mean, I knew that beefy guy looked like trouble.”

A quick nod. “IamGroot!” Branch-fingers made hurried gestures towards the hall.

“Look, I know you insist on following him ASAP, but we gotta play it cool.”

“ _IAMGROOT_.”

“Yeah, I _know_ you got a bad feeling. Look, the guy's durable for a bald-ass terran and they like him around here. Ain't that dire, I'm sure.” Rocket looked up, noticing that Groot's haphazardly strewn robe was already slipping off the crown of bark atop his head. He sighed, popping up as best as he could to tug at the hem. “But meanwhile, the first person goes “AY LOOK A WALKIN' TREE” and we _ain't_ gonna be grass after that.” Hood now properly in place, he returned to rooting around his pocket for the tracker on _his_ hacked update to Coulson's translation chip, noticing that the location data indicated its target hadn't moved in the last half hour. He wiggled the tracker. “Course, it's being a bit hinky on the update cycles. I think I'm only getting pings from about every ten to twenty seconds. You figure he knows I pulled that on him?”

Groot nodded emphatically.

“Yeah, me too. He was smart enough to nick my stuff for a 'mergency call. He banked on it. Maybe no wonder he can put up with this jerk prince.” Rocket clapped a clawed hand on the arm of his friend. “Okay, let's go keep earning our pay. Strictly business, Groot. We're not doing this because you like the human.”

“ _I_ am Groot,” huffed Groot.

. . .

Coulson took a break from nagging at the final and painfully determined hinge pivot, wandering over to one of the tables to snag a couple of absurdly huge fruit globes he felt sure were like grapes. He also tugged a flagon of water closer to him, wincing at the feel of the metal on his skin. His fingers ached to the bone and their tips were ripping underneath cracking nails, despite long years of practice with different types of pliers and various forms of forced entry. The deck of playing cards in his jacket had its role as much as the pliers; the smooth toys wedging carefully into the gap between gritty metal pieces in an attempt to help force an easier slide between them.

He could picture the Asgardian blacksmith that once produced such hinges for the great golden castle, and not only was this image of a giant and beefy figure in front of a rolling mystic forge, but Phil could picture himself kicking the guy in the jimmy just on sheer pissed-off principle.

In a fit of pique he muttered to himself, “I'm gonna ask Loki for a magic can of WD-40 after this, you watch me.” Then he wandered back over to the door and hunkered down again, wincing as he took the pliers back out to keep fretting the slender piece of metal free. Just a couple more inches. All he needed.

And some band-aids, okay. He flexed his hand as the pliers slipped and clanked against the hard door, the tired muscles in the back of his hand no longer wanting to play nice. There was a temptation to wait until backup arrived, but dammit, he could and would get himself free at least part of the way.

. . .

Getting into the castle was a moderately trickier affair, but they managed it without causing a scene. The two robed figures, one tall and awkward and one wee and full of swagger managed to sneak through the visitor's gates with a batch of what they figured were some sorta supplicants from somewhere in Asgard's Nine Realms. Dwarves, maybe. Rocket didn't know or care.

Beyond that, nobody gave them much of a second glance, although Rocket braced for trouble when an imposing figure in sleek gold armor paused in his tracks as he passed them. The Asgardian had strange, piercing eyes set bright in a raven-brown face, and he stared at the pair for a long time. Then the guy wandered away with an odd little smile. Didn't call the guard, so there was _that_ for small favors, reckoned Rocket. He tugged Groot down one of the hallways before weird-eyes decided to change his mind and come back, his own beady pair's gaze stuck fast to his tracker display.

“He's close,” he muttered almost under his breath to Groot, the pair now shifting carefully down silent, eerily deserted halls. “Real close, even. Keep an eye out.” The tracker beeped to underline his statement, indicating a possible location down another hundred meters or so. He shook it again, trying to force it to update with better tracking information.

“Oh, hey guys,” said Coulson conversationally, popping around a corner ahead with his hands in his pockets. “Thanks for coming.”

Groot beamed, delighted. Rocket did a double-take, nearly dropping the tracker. “The fu-”

Phil took his hand out of his pocket to gesture at one of the connecting halls, jostling the satchel on his shoulder. The humie's hands were ripped up pretty good. A little trace of fresh-looking blood stained the wrist of a white shirt under the navy jacket. “I spent a bit of time trying to figure out where the hell everything leads. I think I have an idea how it's laid out now, but maybe not. Have any trouble getting here?”

Rocket thought of the big gold guy and the amused look on his face. “Not much. Nothing we can't handle.” He preened, getting his swag back.

“Cool. At this point, gentlemen, I'd like to have an armed guard to make sure I can find out where they _actually_ keep the All-Father.” He pointed at the lump under Rocket's robe. “That thing got a stun setting?”

“They Asgardians. Short of rebuilding on the fly for some bigger boom, _everything_ I brought is on a stun setting.”

“Point taken. Supposedly Volstagg is keeping a bunch of guards distracted from this part of the castle, so if any come in, don't pop 'em. They're not in on it or anything, so finding a patrol is probably an automatic win. I ask 'em to take me to the king and we're good.” He shrugged. “Hopefully. Now if you see axe-man again?”

Rocket's muzzle sneered into a dry grin, unholstering the gigantic pulse rifle. The robe slid free, forgotten. “I go for the knees if he so much as farts at us.”

“Just... really pull your punches. The guy legitimately thinks he's doing the right thing. I just want to get past him, not take him out.”

“If he's got the courage of his convictions, humie, where does _his_ line on battle damage get drawn?”

Coulson inclined his head, acknowledging the point while Groot delicately plucked his own robe off his shoulders to let it drop. “Let's try to not find out.”

. . .

Volstagg had no mind nor heart for crime, but nor was he entirely foolish. The sensor he'd left in the hall to notify him if a patrol defied his request went off far too quickly, telling him _something_ was gone awry. That the human would fight to free himself did not cross his mind, however. When he strode back to the silent hall to look for and deter the wayward patrol he thought sure he would find, he was startled to find the door he'd locked carefully removed and shoved to the side, its hinges destroyed.

_Thor's friend is a cagey one,_ he thought to himself, avoiding any panic. The human could not have gone far. Like Thor, the human was of a painfully honorable bent; Volstagg's pleas had mattered naught to him. He would fulfill his duty if at all possible, regardless of the nature of the snake that had requested that duty. He bowed his head once, filled with grudging admiration for the man's persistence. Then he considered the halls he knew well to judge the best way to find the son of Coul and corral him one more time.

. . .

“How much castle does this All-Father guy need?”

“I asked a similar question when I got here and at the time I really didn't get how obnoxiously big this place was. I guess it's so you don't get bored with the décor every couple of centuries or something. Did we get turned around?”

“How the hell would I know? Too much of this crap is the same shade of _frickin' gold_!”

“I _am_ Groot.”

Rocket swiveled to regard his partner. “Right? Oh, no, wait, you're suggesting directions. Sorry, thought you were agreeing with me.” He glanced up at Phil as Groot muttered again. “We go right. He says it smells different.”

“I'll take different,” said Phil, turning the corner Groot suggested. Well, there were some new things on the wall he didn't recognize, and the slope of the corridor was going upwards again. “Hey, progress. I think.”

“Place should have a tourist map.”

Coulson snorted. “This is not the first time I've had to think pretty much the same thing. At least we don't have horrifying eldritch entities this time around. Unless they just keep those in the basement.”

“Whatever. Here it's just a lotta bling I can't get off the walls. Uh, not that I tried.”

“Of _course_ not,” deadpanned Coulson. And then he stopped as the shadow filled the hall ahead of them. “Ah, crap.”

“Son of Coul!” Volstagg's gigantic axe was in his hand and his face was serious. “I will not bring thee harm, my oath is sworn. But thou must not pass.”

“Does everybody here yak like that?” said Rocket, obliviously drawling the words in his own faux-Jersey accent.

Coulson ignored him. “Okay, Gandalf. Me Balrog, you mighty warrior-wizard. I know how it seems-”

“I am no mage!” Volstagg spit, his face darkening at the insult.

“It... nevermind. Look. Volstagg. I _am_ getting past you. Now, you can _step aside_ and let me go to the All-Father to finish this, or I will _make you._ ” Without looking, he reached down and yanked the pulse rifle away from Rocket, also ignoring the offended _hey!_

Still not giving up on what he hoped would be just a bluff while knowing full well that if Rocket got the weapon back it _wouldn't_ be one, he pulled the oversized weapon up to his shoulder. He did his level best to not show that he suddenly realized the trigger was way too dinky and raccoon sized for his torn-up hand's comfort. _Think Golden Globe-caliber performance, Phil,_ he told himself, and got into firing position anyway. Volstagg's axe swapped hands, ready.

“ _ **I. AM. GROOT.”**_ The towering tree figure swept past his pair of stunned friends and placed himself between them and Volstagg, now roaring unintelligibly at the Asgardian warrior. Thick vines and sharp sticks grew from his shoulders, seeming to double the size of the arboreal colossus into something intensely more primal and intimidating.

“Now it's on, Beardy!” yowled Rocket. Phil slapped away the claw as it tried to snag back the giant firearm.

“'Tis been ages since a tree did come to Asgard as an enemy, and then only legend.” Volstagg brandished his axe at Groot, the threat implicit and extremely real. “I _will_ cut you, strange one, for my promise need not extend to you!”

“IAMGROOOOOOOOOT,” A vine lashed out and slapped at the warrior. Phil blinked when he realized Groot wasn't actually trying to hurt Volstagg, he was just trying to drive him back enough for his friends to pass.

The sight of Volstagg's first lunge towards Groot put Rocket into a frenzy. “ _DON'T YOU HACK UP MY BUD, YOU JERKWAD_.” Rocket started snarling, digging futilely around his pockets with one hand and clawing up at Phil's side with pointy nails with the other. It was a fight to keep the weapon out of reach, the only chance to keep things from escalating out of control.

Volstagg held firm, however. He swung at the vine with a mighty chop and caught only open air. The vine snaked back and wrapped itself around his wrist and now warrior and tree were wrestling close, the sounds of the struggle filling the hall. Phil jerked the gun back up to his shoulder, prepared to take a shot if he had to, to keep Groot's ploy from getting himself hurt. The worried screeching from Rocket was enough to convince him to intervene.

One of Groot's charges _did_ drive Volstagg back a few feet, but he recovered enough to keep his place in the center of the hall. The axe trembled, then found a new grip. The great warrior bared his teeth at the tree, growling back as Groot roared again.

The flat of a shining blade suddenly appeared on Volstagg's shoulder as his warrior's growl faded, and man and axe both froze. “Enough, Volstagg, my good friend,” came the steely, even voice behind the thick figure.

“Shield-sister, I beg you to not interfere,” said Volstagg, still not moving from his blocking position.

Phil let the gun droop a little, leaning hard to his side to make out part of the slender profile behind Volstagg. “Oh. Hey, Sif.”

“Lord Coulson,” Lady Sif said primly, the sword not leaving her friend's shoulder. “Volstagg, I will not ask again. Let your axe lower.”

“Sif-” Volstagg swallowed, the axe drooping just slightly. Groot did not step back from his own place in front of the warrior, his face still fierce and ready to keep fighting if the man moved towards him again.

“I have watched you these few days, and now this hour alone Heimdall comes directly to me and says ' _Hear what I have seen in these halls.'_ And what do I hear but my suspicions borne sour fruit? Volstagg, long friend, your fear undoes your heart. This is not your honor, not ours, nor Asgard's.”

“Holy moly, they really all do talk like this.” Rocket shook his head, ignoring Phil's attempt to shush him.

“Sif, please. I warned him once I would end him if he threatened Thor. Threatened us. I must hew to my duty. You don't understand.”

“I _do_ , Volstagg. I do.” Sif let her blade fall when the warrior's shoulders sagged in growing defeat. “If Loki indeed be the monster we have just cause to believe, then the gravest thing here would be for you to fall into shame and conniving to see him ended.” She replaced the blade with her hand, squeezing his shoulder. “You must let the truth speak. If he go free due to it, then so it must be. _Truth_ , Volstagg. And honor. Let us be better than what Loki has been, not act as he might once. In that path is only familiar shadow.”

Volstagg sighed, low and heavy. He slumped to the ground, his thick legs folding underneath him. Something broke in his voice. “I only wish to save us from the serpent, that agent of Ragnarok. You know what he is, Sif. _You know_.”

“I understand, Volstagg.” Sif's dark eyes flickered to Coulson's face, and her expression did not reveal what she saw there. “But believe in Thor, and the friends he chooses, much as Thor believes in us. This good man comes to speak, and though it may well not be what we desire to hear, he has earned the right and more to do so.”

The gingery head bowed, contrite. The fight was fully drained from him. “I plead with all of thee to not tell Thor of how close I come to betraying my honor.”

“You tried to cut my partner with an _axe,_ ” snapped Rocket, still wild and pissed off and inclined to get the pulse rifle back for a free shot. Coulson flapped at him again as Groot turned with a passive, forgiving expression. “So _you_ ain't put out! That's your nature! Ain't mine! I seen this go down before!” He shook his furry paw at Groot, the docile tree now approaching his friends once more.

Groot leaned down towards his friend, his voice deep and meaningful. “ _i am. Groot...”_ He reached down and gently petted Rocket between the ears. That seemed to calm him down and he heaved a tiny yet magnificent sigh that rippled through his orange jumpsuit.

Coulson and Sif shared a look. “I've had a really interesting week,” he offered. “Also, I'm totally okay with not dragging Thor into this part. I get it, believe me. I'm not mad.”

“He has fretted for your safety enough without any ability to fight for you, and I think he has not been alone doing so. To know also his friend was tempted by desperation would be a great sorrow. We will keep it between us as best we may.” Sif stepped to the side of the now-silent Volstagg and regarded Asgard's trio of alien visitors with a bemused expression. “ _These_ were Loki's hired adjutants?”

Rocket snapped her a sharp look.

“They did great. Five stars on Yelp.” The joke went down like a lead ballon, four sets of eyes giving him only a puzzled look. “It's a compliment, ignore me.” He shrugged. “So, can I get a lead up to where you guys keep Odin? I got a presentation to give.”

Sif bowed low to him. “I will escort you personally, if you are willing to yet trust.”

“We're cool.” Phil turned to the pair. With Rocket finally calming down, he felt safe enough to give the pulse rifle back. Groot straightened up, watching him. “You two want to go look at a king?”

“Nah, we'll go back to the ship if nobody's gonna give us trouble for cracking into the castle like we did. Ain't much on the atmosphere in here.” Rocket sighed, patting at Groot's arm. “No offense, lady.”

“If you stand with good Coulson, you are welcome here. Travel freely.” She bowed her head politely, if still looking slightly baffled.

“Yeah, huh?” Rocket glanced at the human. “We're still on hire. Staying in dock till we hear the news.”

Phil nodded, sticking out a hand. “Thanks, Rocket. Was great tooling around the galaxy with you two.”

That drew an amused snort. “You're a little screwed up, just like the rest of ya humans that I've ever met.” The tiny claws wrapped around his hand and gave it a surprisingly firm shake. “Good luck with your jerk friend,” he said, glancing at Groot to tell him to follow.

Groot nodded, then looked at Coulson. “I gotcha,” said Phil, and Groot smiled for him one more time. “Thank you, too.” He turned to Sif with his hand spread. _Lead on,_ it said.

She did.

 


	17. The Hanging Tree, Yggdrasil

Loki rested little as he waited through the long hours for his fate to be known. He spent his time during Asgard's slow cycles of day and night whispering dead, lost names to himself and reading his books. Sometimes he only sat quietly and thought, though what he thought about did not ever show on his pale, weary face. Now and then he thought he spied the hard black outline of a raven creeping close to his window, but he did not remark after it, nor let slip that he knew he was ever being watched.

Still, he was surprised one night to hear sturdy, purposeful footsteps he recognized well beyond his door, and to see the shadows of them pause just outside. He kept his face turned toward the book in his lap, but he also watched carefully to see what the feet would do.

Something cold passed through him, leaving that eternal bitter taste in his mouth when the door creaked open and feared, grey old Odin walked slowly into his room. “You should not be here, All-Father,” Loki managed to mutter in a steady and dour voice, his first line of defense. “The court has not yet been called to grant judgment and so you breach the rules.” He shut the book and looked up from it towards the door, not ready to rise to his feet as he knew he should, not yet truly looking at the white-haired king that once towered over him. It struck him that as long as he stayed seated, the old king towered still. He inhaled and gracefully pulled himself up, the book clasped in his hands like a shield. “Or do you come with faint kindness to warn and prepare me so that I may act honorably at my execution? Wouldn't want to embarrass your family any further.”

There was only silence as Odin pushed the door shut behind him. The depth of that stillness drew his gaze at last to the face of the man who once raised him. And the old king was a stone, watching him with that one all-seeing eye. He looked away again, feeling that this time he'd lost the first strike of some silent battle. He didn't know how; when had the great king grown so small and so old? He didn't know.

Odin stepped further into the room, finding one of the wider-seated stools under a desk and settling himself heavily onto it. The voice rumbled out after. “Your gambit succeeds, Loki.”

That drew his gaze back; studying the lined face, the ornate patch over one eye, and not finding clear answers written there.

Odin coughed a short, dry laugh. “Your advocate speaks well for a human. He presents much to consider. He does it simply, clearly, and well; and what he speaks of is complex. So I _must_ consider. To that end, Loki, to my contemplations, I give you a chance. I will listen. Speak to me.” A broad hand gestured to him. “Please.”

“Of what?”

The lone eye flickered away, then found its way back to the drawn face of the prisoner. “The road that leads to a dead world. Any of it. All of it. Tell me _why_.”

“You've been told that.” His voice was cracking ice, the book feeling like stone in a frozen hand. He hated that, detested the thing in himself that still felt like a child when the old king looked at him like this. He wanted to run.

There was nowhere in the galaxy to run to. He himself ensured that, knowing his own temptations. He sat down again instead, a little too hard, a fraction too unsteady, knowing that the sharp eye no doubt saw the wavering in him. He buried the self-loathing before it became a flame, swallowing it down with the bitter and the bile.

Odin shook his head. “No, Loki. Your man Coulson tells me what he sees, and when prompted, tells me what he believes. I do not know what _you_ saw, nor what you could tell. Will you squander your chance, then, when you've fought so hard for it on the back of a simple human? Is truth now that difficult for you?”

“When truth will not be heard, what's left but lies?”

“Don't, please. Don't philosophize to me when I need a clear voice.” Odin shook his head, hand raised in a kind of surrender.

“It isn't philosophy.” Loki set the book down and then promptly picked it up again, trying to center himself and resorting eventually to lying to himself about how well that was working out for him. “It is what _I_ see. What I felt.”

Odin studied him, considering that. “Thor comes to me after the departure of your advocate those days past and spoke, if unwillingly, of your battle here. He takes it bitter that you think he only fights for a shadow of you. That he clings to memory.”

Loki looked up, eyes sharply green against his frustration. “But I do not think my words wrong.”

“Is that what you felt? That myself, that our lost Frigga, did not see you?” Odin watched the ghost pass across Loki's face at the name. “Do you believe we continue to mourn a dead thing and forget the living man?”

“You don't want this conversation.” He stood up abruptly, moving to the shelves to put away the book neatly where it belonged. His fingers traced the spines of others, not reading the titles. They were blurry for some reason he couldn't seem to understand.

That dry laugh again. “I do, Loki. I think perhaps it was you who were not as ready for it as you believed. Quit jousting and _talk._ Once. From a beginning, if not _the_ beginning.”

“And you will listen.”

“I will listen.”

. . .

“I fell,” he said, the words eventually forcing themselves through clenched teeth. “I let go of the Bifrost, of Asgard, of all of you, and I fell... But I also remember that moment doubled, like a dream, being _forced_ to let go. Being sent to my death by those that were to care for me.” He was still staring at his books, not seeing anything but the shattered bridge and the distant stars beneath him. That image was sharply clear; a truth in both recollections. “The dream is layered atop memory later, forged hard in... in pain. I don't wish to speak of that, it doesn't matter. But between my fall and the place where I landed on Earth is a great darkness, a path made in both death and unkind life. My fury with Thor and my claim that I was abandoned when he sought me and the Tesseract both is no lie. Not to me.”

His hand fell away as he continued, his voice distant. “No one would listen to that story of the time between. None of you cared to know or could possibly understand. And at the time, nor could I speak the whole of it. It does not matter. After all, not all my acts are excusable by that gambit. Some of them come from my will, a free one though I might have thought otherwise once.”

“But not all. What was done to you?”

“I changed. By force and by choice both. Leave it at that. Let me have that much.” He inhaled, his memory trying to fill itself with things better forgotten. Things that screamed, and some of the screaming things were the shattered, sharp fragments of himself. He fought against them. “And when I was first on Earth, I was hollowed out and given only another's purpose. There has been little left of me since, I think. And no one would _see_. So it compounds in my desperations. The dark road forced, and then willingly chosen of a need to fill myself with some purpose of my own. It has been difficult to turn aside from that road. Hard to know if I actually have.” He turned away from the books, face grim and drawn. “Thanos is coming, All-Father. I know, for I've seen him about his grim business. I have done that business. I have _been_ that business.”

“I recall previous warnings of the warlord and his work from elsewhere in the galaxy. The self-styled God and King, if a mad one.” Odin watched his lost son pace.

“You must not dismiss him. In slow privacy he is growing into something terrible. What he seeks will be the undoing of all, and it's that undoing he craves. He _is_ mad. Ask any madman.” Loki managed a sharp, brittle laugh. “And he rises too fast. The army grows. The monstrosities spread. If you listen to anything I say, listen close to this warning. Please.”

“His army. These Chitauri.”

“ _Armies._ Others. The Sakaraans, the fanatics among the Kree, things with no names. I don't know all of it, I was not permitted that much.”

“And so you struck out at a world intended for his might. You war with him, then?”

“With the Chitauri, at least.” Loki paused his pacing to stare out the window. He didn't want to know what expression sat on Odin's face. “It occurred to me whilst I fled one fate to try to make another that I was used more than I ever knew. Tossed aside when they considered me of no further value. I felt I owed them a war for that.”

“Hanh,” came Odin's voice, touched with some dark amusement. “But not Thanos?”

“If I must, in time. Even you see this in me at my worst, All-Father – should I demand a kingdom, I want a _living_ one.” Loki shook his head. “Thanos's desired kingdom is an infinity of death alone.” He glanced back to the All-Father, meeting the one eye even as the contact jolted him. “Should I walk from this room and one day in a far future you see me at his side, I might ask you to question well what I am truly doing there. But that is the road of a possibility so far unknown.”

Odin leaned back on the stool with his hands on his breeches, their simplicity belying their fine and royal make. He regarded Loki carefully while their eyes met, knowing it would not last. “Would you not take his stolen power for yourself on that possible road, given chance?”

“I might've once.”

“But not now.” The statement was speculative. Silence answered him and he nodded, accepting what it meant. “No, I think you would not. You have tasted a golden throne twice now and I think this last it might have struck foul against your hungry teeth and bade you to be full.”

“Were you surprised to find yourself astride that throne again?” The green eyes faded and then filtered back to his one, curiosity hiding a different question.

Odin studied him until he was sure of that different question and started there. “I think you begin your telling in a strange place, Loki. Your man claims the value of a second chance, speaks well of it to me when I pry. I ask him where does that line of chance become drawn, and he tells me somewhat unwillingly of one in his acquaintance who yet does _not_ repent, nor change his choices. This unwillingness is not in his voice when he speaks of you. So I wonder now if your journey, which we well know _you_ think begins when you fell from Asgard once again, begins truly elsewhere.”

“And where is that?”

“When you chose not to kill me. Had you done that murder, I think you might not have held any hope for that second chance. No salvation down that road, meant for the damned alone. But I awoke instead. To, yes, some small surprise. That also helped to lay the field where this chance of yours now might grow.” Odin rubbed at his thighs, sighing. “The planet, now. The lost world. Speak to me.”

 . . .

 The green-grey gaze was gone elsewhere again. “I found the track of a ship, of the type I recognize well. I watch for the Chitauri's trails where I can; if they must be my ghosts then I will be theirs in turn. Traced it carefully, wondering what they were about in domains both distant and forbidden. I wondered, and I set myself to that discovery and the answer to why they chose some world half-forgotten on obscure registries. And, eventually, I found out.”

A soft exhale. “And no one cared, or had the ability, or the freedom to involve themselves. I tried scientists first, thinking they might fret less about who sent the message than the nature of it. Even with my identity veiled and the messages carefully formed, few cared. The world, proscribed and distant and primal, was functionally useless to a greater community despite its perfunctory listings. A thousand and a thousand young worlds ahead of it in profitable or scientific interest. No, they had no time to give me, and the things I tried to warn of sounded like madness and myth. The books I found are rare and unspeakable, and so, easy to disbelieve. All either turned away, or a kindly few simply had no resources to spare for the madman and his claims. And there was no time to fight. I was on a clock set by others, I could not move its hands to my benefit.”

He shrugged as he paced slow paths across his room. “So I tried to scream instead as that clock marking a monstrous birth continued to wind down. And still no one listened, for I cannot outrun what I am. I can save nothing, because I've sealed too many paths. All the worlds I called, and again the door shut in my face. _She_ knew,” he started to say, and the name of a dead queen caught in his throat. He cleared it sharply, then continued. “I place myself in cages through my acts, and not all of them have opened again because my _intent_ improves. I have no blame to give, only to carry. And it is a heavy weight I've made, and now it's cost not me, but a world that meant no harm to anyone. I have to carry that, too.”

True to his word, Odin said nothing. Only listened.

“So I went to the world, bearing what I knew and what I'd read. I watched them and considered if there were any other options. I thought to chain the power of the star, find them some mercy and deny the beasts. And in the end, with no time, no other choice left to make...”

A long silence, carrying only soft breathing.

“I... could not end them by my own hand. I could not. I thought I might be ready for it; I've tried my skills at genocide twice before. But now, given no outside resistance save for the last fragments of my conscience, I found I was not made for that final evil. No longer. My compassion is thin, but not yet gone. Perhaps it grows again despite what I've been, but I cannot be any judge.”

Now he could not look at Odin, not for anything. “I watched instead, knowing they were dying, knowing I could do nothing to ease them nor save them. Gods, I swear I _tried_. I am made for many things, and I have forged myself into a weapon of rage and lies and other monstrosities, yes. So I thought I might at least be made for vengeance, and instead used their life to lash back at what ended them. I could give them that much, and that so little. But that planet will haunt me, I think, forever. I remember the beings that lived there. They had names and I took as many of those as I could with me. I could do nothing else.”

He sensed Odin shifting on his stool. “The rest you know, and consider one riddle with me – who comes to you now and asks about that dead planet? Who cares for the lost? Or do they instead ask frantically when I will come for _them_ instead? Well. If Coulson followed my trail well enough to bring you here, then you do know the facts of it. I do not want forgiveness. I do not want absolution. There must be none for this. I can only plead for understanding, in the hope that the warning bell is heard.” His voice trailed off.

“And what of mercy?”

He looked towards Odin, he could do that much. But he saw only the tips of the finely-wrought boots. “I don't know if I ask for that.”

Odin made a soft grunting noise. “Sit, please. You pace too much.”

He did so, taking it as an excuse to hide legs that shook. Again he felt like a child, lost in a wood he didn't recognize.

“Will you let me speak uninterrupted? That is, I know, a powerful request.” There was an edge of some old, familiar humor.

Loki nodded, looking down at hands that felt so cold that he worried fleetingly that they were turning that hidden, secret blue. “I have nothing more to say.”

“Well, so I'll take advantage whilst I can. No. You are correct. I cannot forgive you for the planet's destruction, nor your many other crimes. They are vast and they are beyond my purview, though I think I begin to construct the _understanding_ you require. It will be contemplated through this long night, and in the morrow, you will know if there is to be another dawn yet waiting for you.” He watched as the man, who had once been a harmless and eager to please child, began to tremble through his shoulders. “And while you wait I will give you a thing to contemplate, and in that may be a clue for us both.”

Only frozen silence as the king's pronouncement began.

“I see many things, Loki. I see plans and I see dreams and I hear whispers of both thought and memory. You know this, for you are yet, though I think we both forget from time to time, my son.”

The tremble began again. The face would not turn toward him, grey-green eyes fixed elsewhere by some desperate, breaking need.

“And so I know how 'tis a knife comes to my Queen's life. To your mother's gentle side. I know, Loki, of the choice that guided a killer to her. I know that offhanded word given.” How he remembered the slight and fragile boy. He could remember, because the man was breaking down into one as he watched, the pale face falling unstoppably into a hand to hide.

Odin stood up, towering one more time over that boy, seeing for a fleeting second what only Frigga had seen to her last breath. That second chance somewhere in him. “There is so much in this universe that is not for me to grant forgiveness to, little Loki. But this I _will_ forgive you. For her.”

A thin, cracking sound filtered through the room.

“For I know that you in your greatest darkness would _never_ have willingly lifted a hand against the one who held hope for you to the end of her life. I know this. I forgive you.”

He watched Loki begin to cry, no more sound left in him. And he spread a single hand atop the sleek, black head.


	18. Epilogue: His First Name is Agent

Coulson watched the procession file out of Odin's ostentatious throne room, the great halls filling with the echoing noises of movements and muttered chatter. He himself sat the proceedings out – he found he didn't want to know until there was actually something _to_ know. Being inside and unable to speak again would drive him up a wall. So he waited on a fine and intricate bench of, what else, beautifully hammered and wrought gold, with one leg crossed over another and his hands on his lap. Pretty much like awaiting every courtroom verdict ever, although if pressed, he'd admit to the knots tangling in his stomach.

His gaze picked out one or two notables that he could now recognize – the imposing Jotun delegation striding away with heads high and nothing to say, and the tall, platinum, and regal figure of the Nova Prime herself. He only passed a few words with her directly that morning, but was impressed with her demeanor and an approach to law that was calculating and pragmatic both. Not that _his_ approval meant anything notable in Rocket's 'big galactic soup,' but he at least got the idea she thought he was alright at what he did, too. It was something, particularly since he was really the new kid on the block out here.

It occurred to him that he'd essentially been an ad hoc ambassador from the Planet Earth for a week and the knot returned to churn his guts a little more. Hopefully someone would let him know if he'd screwed it up too badly.

He noticed another pair of shadows down another path out of the throne room and realized that he was looking at the profiles of both Thor and Loki. He couldn't make out much, but they stood relatively close and seemed to be talking to one another. _Talking_ , he noted with some mild wonder. Not bellowing. Something about their posture reminded him of the farewell between Groot and the thief, and he supposed – if not outright hoped – the brothers were trying to make the start of some new truce of their own. Then they turned, and Loki's eyes met his.

Coulson got up from the bench as Loki wandered slowly down the hall towards him. The prince was still dressed plainly in simple greens and blacks, and he looked exhausted. Beyond, Thor gave him a single, firm nod before returning to the throne room beyond. He hid his own relief at what that nod might mean. “And?” he asked, when Loki got closer.

“Well.” Loki spread his hands, where they trembled slightly. On noticing that unwilling hint, he brought them back together in front of him in a deceptively easy clasp. “I am convicted, but the final sentence is to be commuted, bearing in mind certain factors brought to light by my advocate. I am bade to lay low; the Corp will have my identity, my entire genetic code on file. They intend to track my whereabouts closely for who knows how long. Should I approach an illicit weapons market or other such troublesomeness without proper authorization, etcetera, the galaxy entire will probably light up and land on me. Further, should any involved party wish to question me further about the incident or certain related matters, I must agree to consult with them at soonest opportunity. There are a few other wrinkles as well.” He shrugged under the thin green tunic, a little of his old wryness returning. “I rather think that beats all Hel out of my executioners dithering about where precisely my head ends and my neck begins.”

“God, why do you make it sound like there's a story in that?” Coulson crossed his arms and sighed at the demigod, relieved and still torn about what that meant.

“Youthful indiscretion.” Loki flapped a hand dismissively. “The debt is paid and redoubled, Coulson, and I must offer another apology. I traded on your honesty and reputation, but in my defense I had a care to not tarnish either.”

“It's still using people.” Coulson shook his head, turning to walk further away from the mild din and the crowds still filling the halls around the throne. Loki followed slightly behind. “I understand why you do it, even if I don't like it. Hell, I went in knowing that was the play. Just... work on that.” He shrugged his shoulders, still thinking through the timeline. “You couldn't just try telling them what was up when you got dragged here? Just drop the truth and let them sort it out?”

“You know perfectly well why I didn't. In what universe would they ever have believed me? That door was shut and only now _might_ crack free some light in a future need. But, I knew, they would believe _you_.”

Phil nodded, accepting that.. “It was still a flaky gamble.”

“One of my less certain, yes. Even that was to some benefit, I suppose.” Loki looked up to see Coulson glance over his shoulder at him, but didn't elucidate. The haunted expression returned for a moment, and to the human's credit, he didn't ask after it. “You had no troubles, I hope?”

Coulson made a noise, memories of the entire trip flashing quick. Sif brought him a healer for his bleeding hands before he talked to Odin and the rest, one who was uninterested about the causes of his injury. “Nothing I couldn't handle. The guardians you found were pretty good.”

Loki studied him, gathering what he could from what was unsaid. “I rather liked the tree fellow, actually. I think it was he that pressed the little one to accept the bid. Faintly odd, all considered. He was hesitant with me in demeanor, but not unkind. Possibly the smarter of the pair in certain ways, but don't tell the little one. And Knowhere?”

“She found me.”

That hung in silence for a few moments as they walked, Loki gesturing down well practiced trails through the castle. “Did you ever get her name?”

Coulson looked at him again and saw the same quiet suspicions on his face. “No. All I got was that you met in some kinda library.”

“Yes. The City. Which is itself a world and entirely a library as well.”

“Your kinda place.”

That drew a little laugh. “Quite. I sought answers to my own questions while she thieved and gamed at seeking hers.” Another space of silence. They passed through a long balcony, stretching high and long above Asgard. It made Coulson pause – as wearying as the motif became, the kingdom still dazzled and the alien sky was bright and blue. He wandered over to the railing and looked across the horizon, squinting when Loki spoke again. “I come to think her questions dovetailed with the greater shape of mine more than I realized then. That perhaps, ultimately, it was the same question.”

Coulson watched Loki lean against the railing, looking straight down at the rolling lawn and the fluttering flags along its edges. “What question is that?”

Loki lifted his head to regard him with a careful and serious expression. “What do you do with the man that chases only Death?”

Coulson thought about that, about the six stones and their legend. He remembered the damp eyes of the cold woman in her farewell. And he remembered once more, in a chilly flicker that no longer frightened him, dying. “Might let him catch up.”

“And what if she doesn't wish to be caught?”

They looked at each other for a long time, neither one having an answer.

. . .

Thanos watched his servants scuttle and crawl around the base of his great staircase at the edge of the stars, bringing to him the heavy litter and the body that lay under the flowing silver sheet. With slow and menacing import, he descended from his throne and gestured their many-legged bodies away from their offering, thinking of them no more. With only his most worthy guard within sight, he flung the sheet aside to behold the empty vessel left behind.

The lids were closed fast against eyes he knew were black and unfathomable. Glancing once to be sure his guards knew better than to stare at their liege, he lifted his broad hand to caress the hollowed and inhuman face. The anonymous corpse gave no response, yet still a futile anger flickered hot inside him. He pulled at an eyelid with his thumb to look into the film that veiled that beautiful dark eye and snarled in frustration. From somewhere in the folds of her robe, a tiny, withered flower fell to the stones. Thanos gave it no notice. Another step along her side, and his great feet crushed it into lost ash.

No trace of Death Herself remained, save her last gift to the body that once carried her. That frozen beauty, designed as if to mock him, lips curved in the barest and most serene of smiles.

Two of his guards stepped further back, still not watching directly as their titanic God-King pawed futilely, grotesquely at a body. He would execute both later regardless. He would do it with his own powerful hands. Let none forget his might and indomitable will.

Thanos leaned in closer to the cold form and whispered to it, agonized. “ _Why will you not love me?”_

The body still gave no response.

_Where have you gone now?_

It didn't matter. He _would_ find her.

He stepped away and snapped to summon his servants back. They crawled around the edges of the rocks, sensing hidden fury behind his grotesque stone face. One bravely darted closer to clutch the silver winding sheet, clutching it between insectoid feelers. The rest shivered in relief as the action drew no immediate retribution. “Put this shell with the rest. Do it gently and well. I will visit the tombs myself later.”

They shuddered at the implicit threat in his booming voice, doing their work in his wake as he rose up the stairs once more to resettle himself in his galactic throne. He swiveled away to regard the depths of the Universe. Outwardly calm, he steepled wide and purple fingers before him. “I will bring _him_ back to me,” Thanos said to the nothing that was the rich and ceaseless darkness between worlds. “In time.” He nodded, contemplative. “His game of war with my Chitauri proves them weak and prone to mistakes, and him a useful toy. A valuable one, perhaps, one with some drive. He feeds well on vengeance. That amuses me. I will bring him back.”

Thanos settled back against his hard-forged throne to consider infinity.

“In _time.”_

_. . ._

After guidance from Loki, Coulson found the way down towards the low entrance that would take him out of Asgard's castle and set him on the road towards home. He guessed he was going to have to decide when he finally got through the gate – go Star Trek style and beam back on a rainbow, or joyride one more time in a starship hot rod with an alien raccoon that would probably try to steal his car?

Both were pretty tempting.

He waited at the gate when they arrived, noticing that Loki seemed intent on following after him. The demigod seemed privately amused by something, but he wasn't in a hurry yet to share whatever it was. “Where are you going to go?” Coulson asked him.

“Well, as court-ordered, I've got to keep something of a lower profile. And if I must be pressed to honesty... I don't know that I belong here anymore. Least not for now. Though to my surprise, certain relationships have found some slight stability.” Another expression crossed over his amusement. Coulson thought it might be wonder. “I might try to not unbalance those so quickly. Flitting about Asgard being the resident pain the arse might be unwise, if entertaining. Would be easier if I kept elsewhere and visited fleetingly. I note, with some personal irony, my presence often sits better in smaller doses.”

“Granted.” Well, maybe this would decide for him. Let Loki take Rocket's ship, since that was probably part of why they were supposed to stay in Asgard's dock till it was all over. “Well, then. Don't go back to Moord's spaceport. It really was kind of a hole. Some of the staff were nice, though. I think the waitresses liked you.”

That drew a derisive snort and the amusement returned to Loki's voice. “Actually, I thought I might find myself where the lost lambs and the black sheep gather. If that's still something of an option. I'd rather understand if it weren't, considering. But there's my other gamble, I suppose; one more bet regarding your good nature.”

Coulson froze, startled by the implication and realizing that, yes, he himself pretty much set this in motion a long time ago. _Agent Loki,_ he thought, considering the possible concept and its future implications for SHIELD. _Hoo, boy._

“I expect I'll need a lanyard,” finished Loki, shrugging his way past Director Coulson, the eyes sharp and wry again in a still-tired face. “Ship or bridge?”

“Rocket will carjack Lola,” he managed.

“Well, I'm sure he'll _try._ ” Loki shrugged it off, now ahead of Coulson on the road away from the center of Asgard. “Half the fun will be stopping him.” He stopped in his tracks and then turned back to peer at Phil through narrowed, delighted eyes. “The other half will be watching his wee tiny feet try to reach the pedals.”

And on that deadpanned remark, Coulson laughed his way towards Asgard's distant port, going home.

~ _Fin_

“ _Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.” ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omnipotence City is borrowed from the terrific Thor: God of Thunder storyline 'The God Butcher' by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic. I wanted an actual Marvel library to use as a setting, and I was happy to realize I knew one from this series. The canon City is much more focused on the wide and weird pantheon of Marvel's universe, as referenced in Loki's private musings. This version borrows a few thematic elements from Lucien's library in Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' over at the Distinguished Competition, an unceasing library of things that may not normally exist any longer. And that's technically not the only time I do that in this fic.
> 
> Knowhere's grim and possibly murderous origin is borrowed from a few theories about what happened to that dead Celestial we saw onscreen. The comic creators of Knowhere, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, are cagey about the truth. Fun fact – if you saw Guardians of the Galaxy, you may have noticed a Russian cosmonaut dog among the Collector's findings. That's Cosmo, the comic universe's security chief of all of Knowhere! (What's he doing in a box in Tivan Taneleer's place in the MCU, then? I'm going with the obvious theory that Tivan is an enormous dick.)
> 
> The 'Book Thief's' rundown of the origins of the Infinity Gems and its gauntlet is adapted from at least one of the theories that I knew about, although I ramped it up a little. In one version, 'Nemesis' is the figure from whom the stones may have originated, six (and sometimes seven) stones left behind as she grew weary of her own existence and ended it.
> 
> And, yes, the Book Thief is Marvel's incarnation of Death Herself, beloved of Thanos and beloved of... Deadpool? Oh, comics. I love you. In the comics, she's often depicted much more elemental, distant, and ineffable. Since I have HUGE heebie jeebies about mortality, I actually much prefer the more comforting and relatable depiction of her we find, again, in Gaiman's 'Sandman.' So I folded a little of that incarnation into this universe and gave her some voice and agency. This Death isn't interested in just being Thanos' personal Princess Peach. It might be that when you tilt the scales too far, even Death Herself might choose to fight on behalf of Life.
> 
> Director Coulson and Agent (oh dear) Loki will return soon, where a cat may look at a king.
> 
>  
> 
> _1/22/15 MDS. All relevant rights remain in the hands of Marvel with no infringement intended. All realities are fair game. All half-mad demigods do whatever the hell they want._


End file.
